One of Cru’s central goals is to multiply disciples from our college campuses, so that leaders go everywhere and everyone can know someone who truly follows Christ. A college student’s 4-years can be an invaluable missions experience if they so choose to flex their faith muscles! One classic Cru application for this goal has always been to train our students how to share the gospel in a variety of ways. One way is to make sure that when they share their personal testimonies, they not only share a biography but also include a gospel explanation.

Because of Covid, evangelism has looked different but we have not stopped! The Holy Spirit challenged our team to implement the above strategy digitally through what we called “Gospel Selfies,” which are simply videos in which we as staff and students filmed ourselves sharing the gospel through our testimonies and posting these on social media!

Over the winter break, we continued training our students and staff how to do this and asked them to launch this by posting their videos on January 10! After posting my own video on Instagram and Facebook, I saw a couple hundred views, many likes and comments. The biggest praise from this is that a former student names Jose from New Jersey City University (who I have not seen in about 8 years!) messaged me wanting to get together!

On Monday 1/18, we did just that. Jose in fact brought a friend of his named Fernando. We spent our time mostly catching up, but also Jose and Fernando opened up about how difficult work and life has been on them. They shared about struggles with anxiety and friendships (many of which Jose has ended because of how toxic and negative they’ve been). We of course talked about the Gospel Selfie video and faith! He then asked about what church I attend and expressed interest in joining me one Sunday!!

Praise God!!! Pray for Jose and Fernando. Pray they clearly place their faith in Christ. Pray I’m able to be a friend and help point Jose to Jesus. I am also hoping Fernando of course joins as well, since he also seemed interested in Christ.

It has been awesome to see the comments, likes and reactions on all of our student and staff videos since 1/10. Time will tell exactly what the Lord will do through this effort. You too can learn how to film a “Gospel Selfie” by going to www.jerseymetro.com/gospel-selfie. We will continue challenging our students to #LIGHTUP2021 with their Gospel Selfie videos all year! Pray the Lord does a good work!