#208 Movement Update / Uniting to reach every campus with special guest Dan Allan

We're going to have them for a short period of time, and so we want to make the most of that discipleship opportunity.

We want to equip them. We want to train them because we recognize we are a catch and release. We are ascending ministry, and the body of Christ is depending on us to really be faithful in that calling because, I mean, there will be some who will continue to serve in campus ministry, but 90-plus percent of those are going to go into other fields, and we celebrate how they will make a kingdom difference in whatever vocational or geographic calling to which the Lord calls them.

Welcome to the One Cry Podcast, a nationwide call for spiritual awakening. The goal, accelerating the movement of God through sharing revival truth, stories, and reports. Well, welcome to the One Cry Podcast. I'm Ben Dishner, and once again, I get to step into the interviewer seat. Normally I'm in the producer seat, but today I have a friend, Dan Allen from Crew, formerly Campus Crusade for Christ.

And Dan is going to be able to share a lot of insight with us about what he's seeing in the generations, what God is doing to stir up movement across generational divides. But welcome, Dan. Good to have you. Ben, it's great to be with you. So fun to be here talking with a friend about things that we enjoy so much. Amen. Amen. Well, we most recently saw each other in conjunction with Collegiate Day of Prayer, and we have a revival roundtable.

Actually, most recently would have been the National Day of Prayer, I believe. That was a great day, wasn't it? Being up on Capitol Hill like that. Yeah, we had a fun day at the National Day of Prayer, but we'll turn the clock back a little further and talk about the Collegiate Day of Prayer, since that's so specific to our topic today. Absolutely. Absolutely. So could you tell me about the involvement with the Collegiate Day of Prayer?

And even if we could bridge that, we'll just jump in the deep end right now.

What are some trends that you're seeing in Gen Z and Gen Alpha and how God is stirring, even using your ministry through CRU that you're seeing movements all over the world right now. But could you share some of the things you're seeing right now? Yeah, Ben, it'd be my privilege. Actually, to the glory of God, there are some things that I can say about what we're seeing right now that are really, really fun to report.

And so let me start with the good news is that across the landscape of collegiate ministry right now, there are some things that I'm seeing that are increased.

I think we're seeing increased prayer. We'll circle back to the Collegiate Day of Prayer as one just wonderful expression of this increased prayer, but whether it's through every campus, whether it's through other ministry organizations or the Collegiate Day of Prayer, we see students on campuses, we see communities rallying around these students in campuses, and we're seeing increased prayer. We're seeing increased involvement.

I know that this isn't just true of CRU because I'm connected with enough other ministry leaders that in a post-COVID world where we're seeing students get involved again. And we are, in some cases, really at pre-COVID numbers, in some cases, past pre-COVID numbers. But consistently, what we're seeing is this response of Gen Z to this call of discipleship.

One of the stories that I've enjoyed telling here recently is that we restarted our Northeast, our New England, really, winter conference this past year. And we were going to host that, and we did host it in New Haven, Connecticut. We planned, and this was a by-faith number for us because we hadn't had a conference there in more than a decade, and we planned for 250 students.

Well, imagine our surprise when we had to get to hotels, additional hotels, multiple times, eventually in four different hotels, and we had more than 650 students registered to participate in this ministry and training conference. So we're seeing that kind of increased involvement.

I think we're seeing increased unity as well. The Every Campus Coalition itself is one of those expressions where here you have 125 different ministry organizations saying together, we're trusting God for revival and spiritual awakening on the college campuses of the United States. And we're specifically trusting God for a gospel movement at every campus. And for us to be working together, you know, we don't have a great history.

Our history is all too often described as if we were competitors in a marketplace, far more than being different divisions of the family business, all seeking to please our heavenly father. And so we feel like we're living in a moment here where there's this answer to Jesus's prayer from John 17, and we hope it will be a witness to the world that the world would know that we are his disciples by the love that we have for one another. Yeah.

Just one more data point, Ben. I know I've answered a lot, taken too long on this question, but the fourth data point that I kind of want to give you is an increased response rate to the gospel. It's over the last five years, as we report back in our crew world, in personal evangelism, when we share the gospel with people in personal evangelism, each year for the last five years now, we've seen increased response rate to the gospel.

And so now currently the number is about 8.9% of the students that we share with indicate decisions to receive Christ. Now, that's not a perfect number, as you would know, but it is an indication because you just kind of think that that would normalize year to year for us. And so we're really encouraged by what we're seeing, and we really do give thanks to the Lord for the way that he's moving in this generation.

That's wonderful. I read across an article, and just to go down a little rabbit trail, I read across an article this last week, and it was in reference to the combined baptism statistics from this last Sunday, the Baptism Sunday emphasis, I don't know what they called it for sure. Over 26,000 people baptized across the country. Wow, fantastic, yes. Various ministries reporting, and these are just the ones that we've heard, the reports we've heard.

And so that is an indication, just another indication of moves in the positive as far as the needle moving towards spiritual awakening or revival.

We know that we can't make that happen, but we can orient our lives and our ministries in a way that we're ready for it when the Lord does move. So what are some ways that you're seeing through CRU, what are some great things you're seeing, maybe even worldwide as far as large trends? You've mentioned some of those, but... In other regions, are you seeing God moving in the same way as it is happening in the U.S.? Yeah, that's a good question, Ben.

I'll give you one more trend here in the United States that I think is another data point. You may have seen that last December, the Wall Street Journal reported from the Christian media that Bible sales were up 22 percent, and they attributed it largely to Gen Z. And so we hear students, even a testimony that I just heard this week at one of our weekly meetings where a student was sharing her story of coming to faith.

She talked about buying her first Bible and we're hearing those kinds of stories here. So so we're seeing that in the United States and globally. Again, there's it's not a it's not a one story or one one version fits everywhere in the world. We're seeing places where the response rate to the gospel in places that have been what we might describe as hard soil, places where we haven't seen revival.

We haven't seen the church really established at scale in some of these difficult parts of the world where we're starting to see this, what may be a cloud off in the distance the size of a man's hand. But it is something that we haven't seen before in terms of response rate to the gospel and making decisions to really live sacrificially as disciples who say, I'm living for Jesus and he is Lord in my life.

It's pretty encouraging. So there are parts of Asia, parts of Africa that are the places where we are hearing those stories in particular. South America would be another place. But we continue to pray that the Lord would pour out his spirit on this generation. Because, you know, Kerry Newhoff in a recent podcast, his State of the Church, he used a phrase that really resonated deeply with me because we're talking about this revival stuff and we see it, right?

When the Unitas folks gather and they have thousands of people in a stadium and hundreds of baptism, you talk about Baptism Sunday.

And these are amazing expressions. I talk about the Bible sales being up. I talk about the response rate to the gospel, the believers working together, and all those things are true. But Carey used an interesting phrase. He says that Gen Z is both in revival and and retreat at the same time. Even as we're seeing these incredible expressions of response to the good news of the Lord Jesus, we're still continuing to see this regression, this retreat among Gen Z at the same time.

And so this is an appropriate time for us to double down in our youth ministry, our collegiate ministry, young adult, because they're asking those existential questions that every generation asks. Who am I? Why am I here? Where am I going? And the gospel gives us answers to those. Jesus invites us into that relationship. And so we want to be diligent in our ministry to the next generation now.

Amen. So the Great Commission is no less significant in a time of spiritual awakening. Actually, we should press forward in it, just as you said. That's a good word. It's so exciting. Just a time to live in, I think. Even with all of the disparities we see culturally that are happening, we can see so many opportunities at the same time for the gospel to be spread and for people to respond. That's right. And in the midst of that persecution, in the midst of hardship,

I mean, the gospel moves forward. And I think that that may be part of the reason that we're seeing these signs of revival is that the overall environment is a difficult one. And it has been and it has been increasingly. And God is choosing to move and do something special in this moment. And like you said, we want to be prepared. Right. We want to be people who respond in faith with our eyes focused on the Lord Jesus, asking him to do what only he can do. Yeah. Amen.

So how did you get involved with representing crew for the Collegiate Day of Prayer and the National Day of Prayer Task Force? Well, Ben, that's a fun story. I think that part of my role in CRU has a lot to do with prayer. In my area of ministry leadership, we have the director of prayer catalysts, and I sit as the U.S.

Director of prayer for CRU. And so I get invited into these environments where I'm with these humble, godly men and women who are just committed to calling out to the Lord and worship and independence and interceding on behalf of the needs for our country and for our next generation and for so many other areas of great need. And so it really is a privilege to be the person who gets to represent crew in these spaces because of who I get to rub shoulders with and because of what we're doing.

I just, to stop and think about setting aside a day like we do for the collegiate day of prayer and to say, let's call the church to look at the next generation. These leaders now, these leaders of the future who are getting their training, getting their education, preparing for the next seasons of life and their families and in their communities and in their vocational callings. And we get a chance to say, we will intercede on your behalf here.

We will ask the Lord to stir in your hearts in this generation. And so to be a part of that is really a great privilege. And it's just, it's part of the work that I get to do because CRU as an organization was birthed out of a 24-7 prayer chain. It was this sense of asking the Lord for his guidance, his direction. And so participating with all of these wonderful brothers and sisters, these other ministry organizations in the Collegiate Day of Prayer.

It's really quite our privilege, and it's just true to our heritage. It's true to our current dependence upon the Lord. This is just one of those ways that we express that dependence.

Awesome. Awesome. So how did you become a part of CRU? How did God lead you to that? Yeah, I'm one of those stories where I came to college as a Christian student.

I'd grown up in a wonderful Christian home. I had I had friends around me and one of those friends was a couple years older than me I knew him from the bible camp where we had both served and he invited me to this bible study right before school started and and so I said sure I mean I thought that I would be involved in a bible study as a college student that seemed good to me and so I went and and it became clear to me that I'm not sure that my friend was invited

to this bible study and I was quite sure that he was not at liberty to invite somebody else. It seemed like a group of guys who knew each other and who'd just spent the summer on summer mission together, but they welcomed me gladly. And the time studying the word was rich. It was wonderful. And so I said to my roommate, I said, let's go try out crew. And we went, we both enjoyed it. And really that shaped the direction of our next four years.

We got involved in crew right there at the very beginning of my freshman year. We began to pray together. We began to study the word together. We began to share our faith together. And the Lord did something very, very special back in those days at the University of Missouri, where I was an undergrad. So that's how I got involved. And from there, I've sensed God's calling to go and help.

This was right after the Iron Curtain had fallen. I tell the college students these days, back in the 1900s, we did have color. We did have color. It wasn't digital, right? But it was color. And I moved to Romania and I lived there for about a year and a half, right after the The wall had fallen right after the Iron Curtain had fallen, and we were there helping to start campus ministries in Bucharest, Romania, and it was an incredible season of life.

And there, God gripped my heart to be working not just with the leaders and industry as I was going to pursue graduate school, but rather to work with this pinch in the hourglass, this place where all of the future leaders come, and for a short season of time, they are there.

They're wrestling through ideas. They're wondering about the trajectory of their lives and they're saying they're they're just they're moldable and they're ready to consider ideas and and I said I think God's calling me to serve in this space and so.

That's what I've done for the last 30 plus years now And I counted a great privilege to wake up every day and give the very best hours of my day to serving the students of this generation here in the United States and around the world in this gospel calling and

Amen. That's wonderful. That's wonderful. Just to go back to some of the data points we mentioned and kind of focus back around that, we mentioned some things, especially you mentioned the Kerry Newhoff podcast and the concept of revive and retreat. Yeah. What are some trends and concerns maybe you're seeing with Gen Alpha and Gen Z? I know, Gen Alpha, you primarily work with Gen Z right now, but Alpha is coming quickly. They are coming quickly, yeah. Yeah.

And some of these would be true of the millennials as well who have recently left our college campuses. But what I would observe is that there is this increased anxiety. And we can look at lots of reasons why anxiety and depression are so prevalent in this current generation. But I think it has a lot to do with technology and access to social media.

And you're not just comparing yourself to the kids in your neighborhood or the kids at your school, but you're comparing yourselves to people all around the world. You see how people are living their arguably managed lives. I mean, the version of their lives that they're managing and showing on social media, but, but students are comparing themselves. And I think that that's one, one cause of great anxiety, even depression among

students. And so, so that, that, focus is something that is a trend that I think, you know, opens up gospel opportunities, but it's descriptive and it impacts how we engage with this, this emerging generation. Another trend that we see is, is biblical illiteracy. Whereas generations before 20, 30, 40 years ago, kids might've grown up going to Awana, the Christian kids. Anyway, they may have grown up going to youth group and Christian kids anyway.

But now even among people who would claim the name of Jesus. You have fewer kids who memorized verses in Awana or who went to Dare to Share as a high school student or something like that. Those things are just less frequent now as students are arriving on campus. And so where we start in ministry is just in a different place. There's nothing good or bad, right or wrong about it.

It's simply, it's a different starting point. And we have to adjust our campus ministry discipleship journeys to recognize where the students are as they start with us. And so we've developed evangelistic tools like mental health in Jesus. We're doing things like partnering with the chosen to say, let's have these watch parties where we watch these episodes.

And then we have discussion guides where we get students into the word, but we're trying to find ways to enter into the students' worlds through the things that are true to their experience. And in one sense, that's not new.

Every generation does something like that. But these are the things that are evident and true in our generation because of some of the trends that exist among Gen Z. And I suspect we're going to continue to see that as Gen Alpha emerges on the campuses, the high school and college campuses across our country. Yeah. And so you working with collegiate age students, I know that you embrace adaptive methods.

And so as you have a new batch coming through, one of the struggles, and I've done some college ministry over the years on a church level, but realizing that you have a new group every four years. And so that consistency, passing the baton, not losing someone in the cracks, that's the hard part.

Yeah, Ben, that's right. I mean, we're thinking about our college ministries being training centers, not just a place where people are going to stay and forever be there, but we're going to have them for a short period of time. And so we want to make the most of that discipleship opportunity. We want to equip them. We want to train them because we recognize we are a catch and release. We are a sending ministry. And the body of Christ is depending on us to really be faithful in that calling.

Because, I mean, there will be some who will continue to serve in campus ministry, but 90 plus percent of those are going to go into other fields and we celebrate how they will make a kingdom difference in whatever vocational or geographic calling to which the Lord calls them. Amen. Amen. So one thing that I think we both are fans of is collaboration. And I know that we have recently wanted to join in the Every Campus initiative with you guys. So we're partnering together with that one cry as...

Could you tell us a little bit more about Every Campus and how it's linking diverse ministries toward one goal? Oh, Ben, now we're in the happy spot of what things I'd love to talk about, as if we weren't already. You can continue to lob these softballs my direction. Several years ago, a leader from CRU and a leader from InterParsi met together at an event called Together 2016.

And as they were there they began to to pray they began to ask the question what is it that we could do together that we could never do on our own and and as we prayed into that a group of us over over a period of several months and ultimately even more than a year as we prayed into that question we began to just be burdened by the reality that after decades of fruitful ministry activity We still, I mean, collectively, we didn't know the data, but we later learned that collectively,

all the campus ministry organizations together, we still don't have a ministry presence right now. The current number is 1,762 college campuses in the United States without a known gospel movement. Now, we believe that God is working on all of these campuses, but the leaders of CRU and InterVarsity, as we looked at this, we said, oh, my.

Perhaps the Lord would lead us, and we entered into this season of discernment, but we wanted to say, as we trust God for revival and spiritual awakening among this next generation, among the students in our country, might we trust God for a gospel movement on every college campus? None of us have been able to do that or arguably could do that on our own. Right. But together we can do something and make a collective impact that goes beyond the ability of any one of our ministry organizations.

And so, Ben, by God's grace, over the last several years, we founded this in 2017, the summer of 2017. And then we launched and went live in December of 2018. So really January, the beginning of 2019.

And and we have seen god build a coalition of partners over 125 every campus partners now who in a sense have put their hand in the middle of the huddle and and different people have different things to offer and and different different groups have different things that they need from the coalition but we are trusting god together we're building relationships and trusting god together for a gospel movement on every college campus in the

united states And so it's this powerful thing where we are doing something in the mission together. By God's grace, really and truly for his glory. And so we think about what we're doing and we've said it starts with prayer. So I mentioned this earlier and I'll come back to it now, but we set out right out of the gate to say, look, we went to prayer walk every one of these college campuses because we believe that gospel movements start in prayer.

And as we prayer walked these campuses and ultimately we prayer walked the last several campuses during COVID virtually. So we did it virtually at the end of, at the prayer walking thing, but, but we prayer walked every college campus in the United States. And to our knowledge, it was the first time that had ever happened.

But, but really think about it this way. If we can't prayer walk these campuses, what makes us think that we're going to see God, God raise up a gospel movement on that campus? Certainly it can happen, but I'm just saying it starts with prayer. So, so we set out, we did that. We've built a platform where we're sharing data now. I mean, it's a new day when organizations like this are sharing data and working together, looking at maps and saying, where are you going to go?

How can we work together? And in some cases, for example, in Crew, we learned that Navigators was going to go to a campus and we said, okay, we've already done a little bit of pre-work at this campus. Let's give that to you. You guys launch because you're going to have staff a little bit closer and we'll go to the next location. Or again, in Crew, InterVarsity is here and they've got staff members working.

So let's let InterVarsity do what InterVarsity can contribute and we'll go to the next place. But that kind of collaboration really is a new thing in our day.

And I think that every campus, the trust that we're building, the shared vision, and God doing something very special in our midst is evident in this every campus coalition of partners. Amen. That excites me. One of the foundational principles of One Cry is unite. And so whenever we see kingdom activity like that, we really believe that there's an exponential return. And so it's really exciting when we see that happening. So thank you for leading in that as well.

It really is my privilege. I feel like the Lord has met me in a very significant way through this as well. When we operate and we are eager to maintain the unity of the spirit, when we are... Working together as one, when we are showing the world that we are Christians by the love that we have for one another, look, that's hard work. It's not always easy.

And yet God does something significant, powerful even in our own lives to bring about the transformation that he longs for, because at the end of the day, we're all disciples. We all long to worship him because he is the Savior. He is the Lord. Amen. Amen. So if you don't mind me taking a little journey to the side here, we were at a restaurant in D.C. You mentioned a resource that you have used for years that's connected to some ministry friends that we have that you carried for quite a while.

And I don't know if it was put off, put on, or if it was, it's an assessment type thing that leads you through prayer. What was that resource and how has God used that? It was, I don't know if it was put out by Revival Arts or Life Action or what. Well, it was actually the campus director from my days at the University of Missouri. We did a very significant study of spiritual warfare. We were largely in the book of Ephesians. I've referenced that multiple times now.

And in that context, Dave, he was so good at helping us to say, look, one of the ways that we're going to express our faith, one of the ways that we're going to put on and put off is we're going to go through this daily prayer. And you're right to say that Revive Our Hearts has some similar kinds of resources. So it was very fun for me to see that, especially that the broken and unbroken people that Nancy he put together and did with our, our crew staff.

And that just continues to be powerful in my life. But the, the expression that Dave had there was really from, from Colossians and Ephesians, this idea of putting on and putting off. And, and so This daily prayer is a way for us to say, OK, I am putting off these things and I'm putting on these things in our crew world. We often will use the language of spiritual breathing is that like I breathe out and I get rid of the things that would be harmful to me physically.

And then I breathe in and I take in what will give life. Life we confess our sin we put off our sin and then we put on and live in the righteousness of the lord jesus christ as we walk a path of repentance because we are we are walking a life of confession and repentance to him so that's that's i think what we were referring to that it was just so powerful in my life both as an undergrad and then for the decades to come again a living example of why

we work with college students because you influence them in this very significant moment in their lives. And it has this generational effect, this decades later kind of effect. Oh, amen. Amen. That's, that's exciting. I love also how you characterize that in the breathing out and breathing in aspect. And in essence, that's what our prayer life is supposed to be anyway.

And so we, how can we close out this interview, but how can we pray into that at the end, what are some things that you think collegiate minister or ministry leaders, all across the country can do to lead their groups toward that, toward breathing out and breathing in in that way? I don't know if that makes any sense. Let me see if I can take a run at it. This morning, I was writing up some prayer requests for the campus ministry.

And what I think the Lord burdened my heart with were the I came statements that Jesus made. Okay. So the first one that comes to mind is when Jesus in Luke 19, 10, he says, I came, do you remember? To seek and save that which was lost. And so the campus ministry prayer would be that we are people who, like Jesus, are seeking and saving the lost. That we're going to people where they live and we are presenting the Lord Jesus and this good news that they can be saved by grace through faith.

And so we want to be people like that. We want to be people who like Jesus in Mark 10, 45, where Jesus says, I came not to be served, but to serve and to give my life a ransom for many. How might we be people who are serving others and giving our, laying our lives down and giving our lives for others. I won't go on with all of them, but just, just one more, the idea that, that when Jesus says that I came out, I just lost it here. The other one that I wanted to pick was I came. You may have life.

In John 10, that's a good one. That wasn't the one that I was thinking of, but I was just thinking about these I came statements so that we can form our, so that we can be about the things that Jesus was about. And that our campus ministries would reflect those priorities that brought Jesus from heaven to take on flesh, to dwell among us so that we could behold his glory, glories of the only begotten of the father who was full of grace and truth.

And so I would want our prayers to be aligned to that end so that we might be people who are a blessing to others. So that's how I just this morning was shaping my prayers related to the campus ministry. And that might be how I would invite your podcast listeners to participate with us, praying those I came statements back on behalf of the campus ministry.

Amen. Amen. And one last plug for every campus. If you want to invite the leaders that are listening to get involved with that, what do they need to do? Yeah, thanks, Ben. We'll put this in the show notes, but I'll give Ben the link to everycampus.com.

And it's an onboarding form that you fill out, but we would welcome you to be part of this community of leaders who are actively thinking about, praying for and engaged with the next generation as we trust God for revival and spiritual awakening on every college campus.

And so whether you're church-based or whether you're campus-based, we would invite you to participate here because it's going to take all of us, all of us with the diversity of our giftings, the diversity of our talents, the diversity of our locations, the diversity of our diversities, right, to reach a diverse generation for Christ.

And so we welcome you into this coalition. And we would invite you to be somebody who is both contributing to or giving to this coalition, but also receiving from, because that really is our motto here.

It's a network of people who are joined together for this common vision in this common mission to say, how can we help one another, recognizing that we bring something different, Each one of us, each one of our organizations, how can we work together in this kingdom calling to help fulfill the Great Commission in our generation? Amen. Amen. Well, then, can I have you close us out in prayer? I'll let you pray us out. I'd love to.

Heavenly Father, as we bow before you, we consider how Jesus expressed why he came. He came to seek and save that which was lost He came not to be served but to serve and to give his life a ransom for many, He came to preach the gospel, not just to the villages that had received him, but to the other villages also. That's why he came. And so, Lord, we are people who want to follow this model that Jesus provided for us in his life and in his words so that we might magnify you.

We lay down our lives as responses of worship because you are the worthy one. And I pray that we would be people who make a difference every day, every moment of every day for Christ and for your kingdom as we walk by faith as a response of worship. We give you thanks as we pray together in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. Amen. Well, thank you, Dan. Thank you so much for taking some time to be with us. And thank you, everyone, for joining us again for the One Cry podcast.

And we hope to see you again next week. God bless you. Thanks, Ben. Great to be with you.