Latest / The OneCry Podcast / #208 Movement Update / Uniting to reach every campus with special guest Dan Allan

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#208 Movement Update / Uniting to reach every campus with special guest Dan Allan · The OneCry Podcast

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We're going to have them for a short period of time, and so we want to make
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the most of that discipleship opportunity.
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We want to equip them. We want to train them because we recognize we are a catch and release.
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We are ascending ministry, and the body of Christ is depending on us to really
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be faithful in that calling because,
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I mean, there will be some who will continue to serve in campus ministry,
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but 90-plus percent of those are going to go into other fields,
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and we celebrate how they will make a kingdom difference in whatever vocational
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or geographic calling to which the Lord calls them.
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Welcome to the One Cry Podcast, a nationwide call for spiritual awakening.
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The goal, accelerating the movement of God through sharing revival truth, stories, and reports.
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Well, welcome to the One Cry Podcast. I'm Ben Dishner, and once again,
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I get to step into the interviewer seat.
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Normally I'm in the producer seat, but today I have a friend,
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Dan Allen from Crew, formerly Campus Crusade for Christ.
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And Dan is going to be able to share a lot of insight with us about what he's
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seeing in the generations, what God is doing to stir up movement across generational
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divides. But welcome, Dan. Good to have you.
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Ben, it's great to be with you. So fun to be here talking with a friend about
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things that we enjoy so much.
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Amen. Amen. Well, we most recently saw each other in conjunction with Collegiate
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Day of Prayer, and we have a revival roundtable.
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Actually, most recently would have been the National Day of Prayer, I believe.
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That was a great day, wasn't it? Being up on Capitol Hill like that.
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Yeah, we had a fun day at the National Day of Prayer, but we'll turn the clock
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back a little further and talk about the Collegiate Day of Prayer,
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since that's so specific to our topic today.
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Absolutely. Absolutely. So could you tell me about the involvement with the
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Collegiate Day of Prayer?
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And even if we could bridge that, we'll just jump in the deep end right now.
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What are some trends that you're seeing in Gen Z and Gen Alpha and how God is
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stirring, even using your ministry through CRU that you're seeing movements
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all over the world right now.
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But could you share some of the things you're seeing right now?
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Yeah, Ben, it'd be my privilege. Actually, to the glory of God,
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there are some things that I can say about what we're seeing right now that
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are really, really fun to report.
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And so let me start with the good news is that across the landscape of collegiate
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ministry right now, there are some things that I'm seeing that are increased.
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I think we're seeing increased prayer. We'll circle back to the Collegiate Day
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of Prayer as one just wonderful expression of this increased prayer,
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but whether it's through every campus,
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whether it's through other ministry organizations or the Collegiate Day of Prayer,
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we see students on campuses, we see communities rallying around these students
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in campuses, and we're seeing increased prayer.
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We're seeing increased involvement.
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I know that this isn't just true of CRU because I'm connected with enough other
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ministry leaders that in a post-COVID world where we're seeing students get involved again.
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And we are, in some cases, really at pre-COVID numbers, in some cases,
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past pre-COVID numbers.
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But consistently, what we're seeing is this response of Gen Z to this call of discipleship.
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One of the stories that I've enjoyed telling here recently is that we restarted
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our Northeast, our New England, really, winter conference this past year.
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And we were going to host that, and we did host it in New Haven, Connecticut.
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We planned, and this was a by-faith number for us because we hadn't had a conference
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there in more than a decade, and we planned for 250 students.
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Well, imagine our surprise when we had to get to hotels, additional hotels,
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multiple times, eventually in four different hotels, and we had more than 650
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students registered to participate in this ministry and training conference.
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So we're seeing that kind of increased involvement.
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I think we're seeing increased unity as well. The Every Campus Coalition itself
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is one of those expressions where here you have 125 different ministry organizations saying together,
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we're trusting God for revival and spiritual awakening on the college campuses of the United States.
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And we're specifically trusting God for a gospel movement at every campus.
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And for us to be working together, you know, we don't have a great history.
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Our history is all too often described as if we were competitors in a marketplace,
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far more than being different divisions of the family business,
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all seeking to please our heavenly father.
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And so we feel like we're living in a moment here where there's this answer
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to Jesus's prayer from John 17, and we hope it will be a witness to the world
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that the world would know that we are his disciples by the love that we have for one another. Yeah.
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Just one more data point, Ben. I know I've answered a lot, taken too long on
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this question, but the fourth data point that I kind of want to give you is
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an increased response rate to the gospel.
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It's over the last five years, as we report back in our crew world,
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in personal evangelism, when we share the gospel with people in personal evangelism,
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each year for the last five years now, we've seen increased response rate to the gospel.
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And so now currently the number is about 8.9% of the students that we share
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with indicate decisions to receive Christ.
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Now, that's not a perfect number, as you would know, but it is an indication
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because you just kind of think that that would normalize year to year for us.
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And so we're really encouraged by what we're seeing, and we really do give thanks
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to the Lord for the way that he's moving in this generation.
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That's wonderful. I read across an article, and just to go down a little rabbit trail,
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I read across an article this last week, and it was in reference to the combined
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baptism statistics from this last Sunday,
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the Baptism Sunday emphasis,
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I don't know what they called it for sure.
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Over 26,000 people baptized across the country. Wow, fantastic,
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yes. Various ministries reporting, and these are just the ones that we've heard,
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the reports we've heard.
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And so that is an indication, just another indication of moves in the positive
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as far as the needle moving towards spiritual awakening or revival.
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We know that we can't make that happen, but we can orient our lives and our
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ministries in a way that we're ready for it when the Lord does move.
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So what are some ways that you're seeing through CRU, what are some great things
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you're seeing, maybe even worldwide as far as large trends? You've mentioned some of those, but...
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In other regions, are you seeing God moving in the same way as it is happening
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in the U.S.? Yeah, that's a good question, Ben.
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I'll give you one more trend here in the United States that I think is another data point.
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You may have seen that last December, the Wall Street Journal reported from
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the Christian media that Bible sales were up 22 percent, and they attributed it largely to Gen Z.
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And so we hear students, even a testimony that I just heard this week at one
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of our weekly meetings where a student was sharing her story of coming to faith.
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She talked about buying her first Bible and we're hearing those kinds of stories here.
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So so we're seeing that in the United States and globally.
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Again, there's it's not a it's not a one story or one one version fits everywhere in the world.
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We're seeing places where the response rate to the gospel in places that have
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been what we might describe as hard soil, places where we haven't seen revival.
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We haven't seen the church really established at scale in some of these difficult
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parts of the world where we're starting to see this, what may be a cloud off
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in the distance the size of a man's hand.
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But it is something that we haven't seen before in terms of response rate to
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the gospel and making decisions to really live sacrificially as disciples who
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say, I'm living for Jesus and he is Lord in my life.
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It's pretty encouraging. So there are parts of Asia, parts of Africa that are
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the places where we are hearing those stories in particular.
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South America would be another place. But we continue to pray that the Lord
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would pour out his spirit on this generation.
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Because, you know, Kerry Newhoff in a recent podcast, his State of the Church,
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he used a phrase that really resonated deeply with me because we're talking
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about this revival stuff and we see it, right?
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When the Unitas folks gather and they have thousands of people in a stadium
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and hundreds of baptism, you talk about Baptism Sunday.
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And these are amazing expressions. I talk about the Bible sales being up.
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I talk about the response rate to the gospel, the believers working together,
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and all those things are true. But Carey used an interesting phrase.
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He says that Gen Z is both in revival and
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and retreat at the same time. Even as we're seeing these incredible expressions
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of response to the good news of the Lord Jesus, we're still continuing to see
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this regression, this retreat among Gen Z at the same time.
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And so this is an appropriate time for us to double down in our youth ministry,
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our collegiate ministry, young adult, because they're asking those existential
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questions that every generation asks.
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Who am I? Why am I here? Where am I going?
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And the gospel gives us answers to those.
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Jesus invites us into that relationship. And so we want to be diligent in our
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ministry to the next generation now.
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Amen. So the Great Commission is no less significant in a time of spiritual awakening.
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Actually, we should press forward in it, just as you said. That's a good word. It's so exciting.
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Just a time to live in, I think. Even with all of the disparities we see culturally that are happening,
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we can see so many opportunities at the same time for the gospel to be spread
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and for people to respond.
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That's right. And in the midst of that persecution, in the midst of hardship,
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I mean, the gospel moves forward. And I think that that may be part of the reason
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that we're seeing these signs of revival is that the overall environment is a difficult one.
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And it has been and it has been increasingly.
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And God is choosing to move and do something special in this moment.
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And like you said, we want to be prepared.
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Right. We want to be people who respond in faith with our eyes focused on the
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Lord Jesus, asking him to do what only he can do. Yeah. Amen.
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So how did you get involved with representing crew for the Collegiate Day of
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Prayer and the National Day of Prayer Task Force?
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Well, Ben, that's a fun story. I think that part of my role in CRU has a lot to do with prayer.
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In my area of ministry leadership, we have the director of prayer catalysts, and I sit as the U.S.
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Director of prayer for CRU. And so I get invited into these environments where I'm with these humble,
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godly men and women who are just committed to calling out to the Lord and worship
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and independence and interceding on behalf of the needs for our country and
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for our next generation and for so many other areas of great need.
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And so it really is a privilege to be the person who gets to represent crew
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in these spaces because of who I get to rub shoulders with and because of what we're doing.
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I just, to stop and think about setting aside a day like we do for the collegiate
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day of prayer and to say, let's call the church to look at the next generation.
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These leaders now, these leaders of the future who are getting their training,
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getting their education, preparing for the next seasons of life and their families
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and in their communities and in their vocational callings.
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And we get a chance to say, we will intercede on your behalf here.
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We will ask the Lord to stir in your hearts in this generation.
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And so to be a part of that is really a great privilege. And it's just,
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it's part of the work that I get to do because CRU as an organization was birthed
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out of a 24-7 prayer chain.
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It was this sense of asking the Lord for his guidance, his direction.
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And so participating with all of these wonderful brothers and sisters,
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these other ministry organizations in the Collegiate Day of Prayer.
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It's really quite our privilege, and it's just true to our heritage.
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It's true to our current dependence upon the Lord.
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This is just one of those ways that we express that dependence.
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Awesome. Awesome. So how did you become a part of CRU? How did God lead you to that?
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Yeah, I'm one of those stories where I came to college as a Christian student.
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I'd grown up in a wonderful Christian home. I had I had
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friends around me and one of those friends was a couple years older
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than me I knew him from the bible camp where we had both
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served and he invited me to this bible study right
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before school started and and so I said sure I mean I thought that I would be
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involved in a bible study as a college student that seemed good to me and so
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I went and and it became clear to me that I'm not sure that my friend was invited
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to this bible study and I was quite sure that he was not at liberty to invite somebody else.
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It seemed like a group of guys who knew each other and who'd just spent the
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summer on summer mission together, but they welcomed me gladly.
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And the time studying the word was rich. It was wonderful.
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And so I said to my roommate, I said, let's go try out crew.
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And we went, we both enjoyed it. And really that shaped the direction of our next four years.
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We got involved in crew right there at the very beginning of my freshman year.
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We began to pray together.
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We began to study the word together. We began to share our faith together.
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And the Lord did something very, very special back in those days at the University
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of Missouri, where I was an undergrad.
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So that's how I got involved. And from there, I've sensed God's calling to go and help.
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This was right after the Iron Curtain had fallen. I tell the college students
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these days, back in the 1900s, we did have color.
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We did have color. It wasn't digital, right? But it was color.
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And I moved to Romania and I lived there for about a year and a half,
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right after the The wall had fallen right after the Iron Curtain had fallen,
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and we were there helping to start campus ministries in Bucharest,
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Romania, and it was an incredible season of life.
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And there, God gripped my heart to be working not just with the leaders and
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industry as I was going to pursue graduate school,
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but rather to work with this pinch in the hourglass, this place where all of
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the future leaders come, and for a short season of time, they are there.
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They're wrestling through ideas. They're wondering about the trajectory of their
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lives and they're saying they're they're just they're moldable and they're ready
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to consider ideas and and I said I think God's calling me to serve in this space and so.
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That's what I've done for the last 30 plus years now And I counted a great privilege
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to wake up every day and give the very best hours of my day to serving the students
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of this generation here in the United States and around the world in this gospel calling and
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Amen. That's wonderful. That's wonderful. Just to go back to some of the data
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points we mentioned and kind of focus back around that,
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we mentioned some things, especially you mentioned the Kerry Newhoff podcast
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and the concept of revive and retreat.
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Yeah. What are some trends and concerns maybe you're seeing with Gen Alpha and Gen Z?
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I know, Gen Alpha, you primarily work with Gen Z right now, but Alpha is coming
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quickly. They are coming quickly, yeah. Yeah.
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And some of these would be true of the millennials as well who have recently
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left our college campuses.
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But what I would observe is that there is this increased anxiety.
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And we can look at lots of reasons why anxiety and depression are so prevalent
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in this current generation.
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But I think it has a lot to do with technology and access to social media.
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And you're not just comparing yourself to the kids in your neighborhood or the
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kids at your school, but you're comparing yourselves to people all around the world.
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You see how people are living their arguably managed lives. I mean,
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the version of their lives that they're managing and showing on social media,
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but, but students are comparing themselves.
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And I think that that's one, one cause of great anxiety, even depression among
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students. And so, so that, that,
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focus is something that is a trend that I think, you know, opens up gospel opportunities,
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but it's descriptive and it impacts how we engage with this,
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this emerging generation.
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Another trend that we see is, is biblical illiteracy. Whereas generations before
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20, 30, 40 years ago, kids might've grown up going to Awana, the Christian kids.
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Anyway, they may have grown up going to youth group and Christian kids anyway.
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But now even among people who would claim the name of Jesus.
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You have fewer kids who memorized verses in Awana or who went to Dare to Share
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as a high school student or something like that.
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Those things are just less frequent now as students are arriving on campus.
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And so where we start in ministry is just in a different place.
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There's nothing good or bad, right or wrong about it.
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It's simply, it's a different starting point. And we have to adjust our campus
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ministry discipleship journeys to recognize where the students are as they start with us.
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And so we've developed evangelistic tools like mental health in Jesus.
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We're doing things like partnering with the chosen to say, let's have these
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watch parties where we watch these episodes.
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And then we have discussion guides where we get students into the word,
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but we're trying to find ways to enter into the students' worlds through the
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things that are true to their experience.
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And in one sense, that's not new.
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Every generation does something like that. But these are the things that are
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evident and true in our generation because of some of the trends that exist among Gen Z.
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And I suspect we're going to continue to see that as Gen Alpha emerges on the
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campuses, the high school and college campuses across our country.
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Yeah. And so you working with collegiate age students, I know that you embrace adaptive methods.
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And so as you have a new batch coming through, one of the struggles,
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and I've done some college ministry over the years on a church level,
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but realizing that you have a new group every four years.
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And so that consistency, passing the baton, not losing someone in the cracks, that's the hard part.
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Yeah, Ben, that's right. I mean, we're thinking about our college ministries
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being training centers, not just a place where people are going to stay and
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forever be there, but we're going to have them for a short period of time.
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And so we want to make the most of that discipleship opportunity.
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We want to equip them. We want to train them because we recognize we are a catch
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and release. We are a sending ministry.
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And the body of Christ is depending on us to really be faithful in that calling.
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Because, I mean, there will be some who will continue to serve in campus ministry,
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but 90 plus percent of those are going to go into other fields and we celebrate
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how they will make a kingdom difference in whatever vocational or geographic
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calling to which the Lord calls them. Amen. Amen.
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So one thing that I think we both are fans of is collaboration.
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And I know that we have recently wanted to join in the Every Campus initiative with you guys.
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So we're partnering together with that one cry as...
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Could you tell us a little bit more about Every Campus and how it's linking
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diverse ministries toward one goal?
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Oh, Ben, now we're in the happy spot of what things I'd love to talk about,
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as if we weren't already.
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You can continue to lob these softballs my direction.
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Several years ago, a leader from CRU and a leader from InterParsi met together
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at an event called Together 2016.
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And as they were there they began to to
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pray they began to ask the question what is it that we could do
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together that we could never do on our own
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and and as we prayed into that a group of us over over a period of several months
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and ultimately even more than a year as we prayed into that question we began
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to just be burdened by the reality that after decades of fruitful ministry activity We still, I mean,
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collectively, we didn't know the data, but we later learned that collectively,
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all the campus ministry organizations together, we still don't have a ministry presence right now.
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The current number is 1,762 college campuses in the United States without a known gospel movement.
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Now, we believe that God is working on all of these campuses,
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but the leaders of CRU and InterVarsity, as we looked at this, we said, oh, my.
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Perhaps the Lord would lead us, and we entered into this season of discernment,
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but we wanted to say, as we trust God for revival and spiritual awakening among
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this next generation, among the students in our country,
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might we trust God for a gospel movement on every college campus?
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None of us have been able to do that or arguably could do that on our own. Right.
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But together we can do something and make a collective impact that goes beyond
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the ability of any one of our ministry organizations.
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And so, Ben, by God's grace, over the last several years, we founded this in
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2017, the summer of 2017. And then we launched and went live in December of
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2018. So really January, the beginning of 2019.
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And and we have seen god build a
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coalition of partners over 125 every
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campus partners now who in a sense have put their hand in
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the middle of the huddle and and different people have different things to
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offer and and different different groups have different things that they need
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from the coalition but we are trusting god together we're building relationships
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and trusting god together for a gospel movement on every college campus in the
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united states And so it's this powerful thing where we are doing something in the mission together.
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By God's grace, really and truly for his glory. And so we think about what we're
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doing and we've said it starts with prayer.
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So I mentioned this earlier and I'll come back to it now, but we set out right
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out of the gate to say, look, we went to prayer walk every one of these college
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campuses because we believe that gospel movements start in prayer.
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And as we prayer walked these campuses and ultimately we prayer walked the last
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several campuses during COVID virtually. So we did it virtually at the end of,
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at the prayer walking thing, but, but we prayer walked every college campus in the United States.
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And to our knowledge, it was the first time that had ever happened.
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But, but really think about it this way. If we can't prayer walk these campuses,
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what makes us think that we're going to see God, God raise up a gospel movement on that campus?
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Certainly it can happen, but I'm just saying it starts with prayer.
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So, so we set out, we did that. We've built a platform where we're sharing data now.
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I mean, it's a new day when organizations like this are sharing data and working
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together, looking at maps and saying, where are you going to go?
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How can we work together?
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And in some cases, for example, in Crew, we learned that Navigators was going
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to go to a campus and we said, okay, we've already done a little bit of pre-work
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at this campus. Let's give that to you.
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You guys launch because you're going to have staff a little bit closer and we'll go to the next location.
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Or again, in Crew, InterVarsity is here and they've got staff members working.
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So let's let InterVarsity do what InterVarsity can contribute and we'll go to the next place.
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But that kind of collaboration really is a new thing in our day.
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And I think that every campus, the trust that we're building,
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the shared vision, and God doing something very special in our midst is evident
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in this every campus coalition of partners.
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Amen. That excites me. One of the foundational principles of One Cry is unite.
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And so whenever we see kingdom activity like that, we really believe that there's an exponential return.
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And so it's really exciting when we see that happening. So thank you for leading in that as well.
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It really is my privilege. I feel like the Lord has met me in a very significant
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way through this as well.
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When we operate and we are eager to maintain the unity of the spirit, when we are...
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Working together as one, when we are showing the world that we are Christians
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by the love that we have for one another, look, that's hard work. It's not always easy.
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And yet God does something significant, powerful even in our own lives to bring
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about the transformation that he longs for, because at the end of the day, we're all disciples.
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We all long to worship him because he is the Savior. He is the Lord. Amen. Amen.
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So if you don't mind me taking a little journey to the side here,
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we were at a restaurant in D.C.
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You mentioned a resource that you have used for years that's connected to some
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ministry friends that we have that you carried for quite a while.
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And I don't know if it was put off, put on, or if it was, it's an assessment
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type thing that leads you through prayer.
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What was that resource and how has God used that?
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It was, I don't know if it was put out by Revival Arts or Life Action or what.
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Well, it was actually the campus director from my days at the University of Missouri.
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We did a very significant study of spiritual warfare. We were largely in the
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book of Ephesians. I've referenced that multiple times now.
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And in that context, Dave, he was so good at helping us to say,
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look, one of the ways that we're going to express our faith,
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one of the ways that we're going to put on and put off is we're going to go
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through this daily prayer.
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And you're right to say that Revive Our Hearts has some similar kinds of resources.
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So it was very fun for me to see that, especially that the broken and unbroken
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people that Nancy he put together and did with our, our crew staff.
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And that just continues to be powerful in my life. But the, the expression that
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Dave had there was really from, from Colossians and Ephesians,
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this idea of putting on and putting off. And, and so
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This daily prayer is a way for us to say, OK, I am putting off these things
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and I'm putting on these things in our crew world.
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We often will use the language of spiritual breathing is that like I breathe
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out and I get rid of the things that would be harmful to me physically.
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And then I breathe in and I take in what will give life.
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Life we confess our sin we put off
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our sin and then we put on and live in
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the righteousness of the lord jesus christ as we
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walk a path of repentance because we are
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we are walking a life of confession and repentance to him so that's that's i
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think what we were referring to that it was just so powerful in my life both
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as an undergrad and then for the decades to come again a living example of why
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we work with college students because you influence them in this very significant moment in their lives.
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And it has this generational effect, this decades later kind of effect. Oh, amen. Amen.
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That's, that's exciting. I love also how you characterize that in the breathing
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out and breathing in aspect.
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And in essence, that's what our prayer life is supposed to be anyway.
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And so we, how can we close out this interview,
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but how can we pray into that at the end, what are some things that you think
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collegiate minister or ministry leaders,
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all across the country can do to lead their groups toward that,
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toward breathing out and breathing in in that way?
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I don't know if that makes any sense. Let me see if I can take a run at it.
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This morning, I was writing up some prayer requests for the campus ministry.
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And what I think the Lord burdened my heart with were the I came statements that Jesus made.
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Okay. So the first one that comes to mind is when Jesus in Luke 19,
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10, he says, I came, do you remember?
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To seek and save that which was lost. And so the campus ministry prayer would
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be that we are people who, like Jesus, are seeking and saving the lost.
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That we're going to people where they live and we are presenting the Lord Jesus
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and this good news that they can be saved by grace through faith.
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And so we want to be people like that. We want to be people who like Jesus in
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Mark 10, 45, where Jesus says, I came not to be served, but to serve and to
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give my life a ransom for many.
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How might we be people who are serving others and giving our,
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laying our lives down and giving our lives for others.
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I won't go on with all of them, but just, just one more, the idea that,
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that when Jesus says that I came out, I just lost it here.
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The other one that I wanted to pick was I came. You may have life.
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In John 10, that's a good one. That wasn't the one that I was thinking of,
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but I was just thinking about these I came statements so that we can form our,
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so that we can be about the things that Jesus was about.
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And that our campus ministries would reflect those priorities that brought Jesus
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from heaven to take on flesh, to dwell among us so that we could behold his
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glory, glories of the only begotten of the father who was full of grace and truth.
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And so I would want our prayers to be aligned to that end so that we might be
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people who are a blessing to others.
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So that's how I just this morning was shaping my prayers related to the campus
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ministry. And that might be how I would invite your podcast listeners to participate
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with us, praying those I came statements back on behalf of the campus ministry.
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Amen. Amen. And one last plug for every campus. If you want to invite the leaders
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that are listening to get involved with that, what do they need to do?
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Yeah, thanks, Ben. We'll put this in the show notes, but I'll give Ben the link to everycampus.com.
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And it's an onboarding form that you fill out, but we would welcome you to be
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part of this community of leaders who are actively thinking about,
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praying for and engaged with the next generation as we trust God for revival
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and spiritual awakening on every college campus.
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And so whether you're church-based or whether you're campus-based,
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we would invite you to participate here because it's going to take all of us,
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all of us with the diversity of our giftings, the diversity of our talents,
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the diversity of our locations,
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the diversity of our diversities, right, to reach a diverse generation for Christ.
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And so we welcome you into this coalition. And we would invite you to be somebody
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who is both contributing to or giving to this coalition, but also receiving
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from, because that really is our motto here.
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It's a network of people who are joined together for this common vision in this
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common mission to say, how can we help one another,
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recognizing that we bring something different, Each one of us,
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each one of our organizations, how can we work together in this kingdom calling
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to help fulfill the Great Commission in our generation? Amen. Amen.
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Well, then, can I have you close us out in prayer? I'll let you pray us out. I'd love to.
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Heavenly Father, as we bow before you, we consider how Jesus expressed why he came.
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He came to seek and save that which was lost He came not to be served but to
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serve and to give his life a ransom for many,
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He came to preach the gospel, not just to the villages that had received him,
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but to the other villages also. That's why he came.
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And so, Lord, we are people who want to follow this model that Jesus provided
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for us in his life and in his words so that we might magnify you.
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We lay down our lives as responses of worship because you are the worthy one.
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And I pray that we would be people who make a difference every day,
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every moment of every day for Christ and for your kingdom as we walk by faith
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as a response of worship.
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We give you thanks as we pray together in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. Amen.
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Well, thank you, Dan. Thank you so much for taking some time to be with us.
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And thank you, everyone, for joining us again for the One Cry podcast.
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And we hope to see you again next week.
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God bless you. Thanks, Ben. Great to be with you.