Arrival to New Staff Training and New Prayer Idea!

Hello Faithful Prayer Warriors, and Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

Matt and I have successfully arrived in Orlando, Florida for our 5 weeks of new staff training. Our time here will consist of two weeks of orientation, two weeks of two theological classes, and then a week of training in ministry partner development (support raising). We are excited! Matt will be fulfilling the role as the worship leader for one of the worship teams that will be ministering to the new staff, and senior staff running the training. I just found out today that I will be a small group facilitator, and I'll continue to learn more about what that will entail.

Our May prayer letter is coming, our hope was to include a student's testimony which is taking longer than expected, but it's worth the wait, you can trust me :). I hope all is well with you as the beginning of busy summers for all begin I'm sure. You are all in our thoughts and prayers.

Actually that is one of the reasons for this blog post! Matt and I both felt led to start praying for a partner every night at dinner, so please share with us any prayer requests that you would like Matt and I to be lifting up for you in prayer. We so appreciate your support whether it be through prayer, financially or both. We hope that this system will be able to connect us on a deeper level, in a way that allows us to serve you as our fellow brothers and sisters. I'll be facilitating all the prayer requests, so please send them to rebeccamjohnson48@gmail.com.

Secondly, Matt and I are still trusting God to complete the needed funds for this training. Please be praying if you feel that God is asking you to give to this special need. I look forward to talking to you all and seeing where life has brought you since we last connected.

God Bless and WARM wishes from sunny Florida :),
Rebecca

God's Hand at Work

Hello Faithful Prayer Warriors!


I just wanted to give you an update that Brittney came on Thursday and LOVED it! She wasn't able to stay for the whole time but is going to come back next week! God is working in miraculous ways and I'm am so enjoying watching Him act in students' lives. 


On Friday we had the third meeting of the Justice Bible Study that I started this semester. After two weeks of foundational preperation of looking into what the Bible has to say about justice and our role in God's plan we set out to talk to students about their beliefs about justice, injustice, and what they think to be God's reaction to both topics. There were three of us total on Friday, so I sent the two students out do the survey with the students. They spoke to three individuals and got their perspectives on justice/injustice and their belief of God's reaction to them. Our desire is to collect information on where the student body is at with questions like: why do bad things happen to good people, etc. This semester we are trying out the survey and improving the questions to best suit UMASS Dartmouth and the need we are trying to meet. The students seemed encouraged by what they had done, one said she could see how she could have gone into the gospel! This is our goal in all conversations; if God opens the door we need to be ready to walk through it.  "But in your hearts revere Christ  as Lord Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks  you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect" (1 Peter 3:15).   


We'll be going out again this Friday! Please pray for opportunities to share the gospel during our justice discussions with the students. Also pray for wisdom as we continue to develop this justice survey, with the intent on sharing the gospel through a topic that the campus feels strong about. Thank you so much for your prayers. To God be all the glory and praise!


God Bless,
Rebecca

April Prayer Letter

Philip ran up and heard him reading Isaiah the prophet, and said, “Do you understand what you are reading?” And he said, “Well, how could I, unless someone guides me?” And he invited Philip to come up and sit with him.

                                                                                                                                   -Acts 8:30-31

April 18, 2012

Dear Ministry Family,

“See this 2-minute video answer to a
tough question.”
An Eye-catching picture and engaging caption can
serve as a Facebook Ad that links to an article or video
at Everystudent.com that only costs us cents per click!

Imagine for a moment a student alone in his dorm room. He has recently come to faith in Jesus Christ and is excited about this new life. However, doubts keep creeping into his mind – challenging his new belief and leaving him without answers. Even if he has a Bible, he doesn’t know how to use it yet, but perhaps he opens it and finds comfort in reading the Bible. As the doubts continue to flow, however, he begins to wonder what he can do. He decides to visit Everystudent.com, a website of Christian articles, because the address is on the side of a water bottle he got at a campus giveaway, or because he clicked on a Facebook ad linked there, or because it’s on a business card he got. He begins reading articles about faith and doubt, sin and forgiveness. While he learns much, he still isn’t satisfied. At the bottom of the article is a link to ask questions – it brings him to an e-mail form and he nervously types in his questions and submits it. The e-mail gets sent to a Cru staff member or student volunteer on or close to his campus, who can then not only answer his questions but meet with him and connect him to a Christian community on campus.

I ask you to imagine this because it has just happened at UMass Dartmouth. I received an Everystudent.com e-mail just last week. I felt so excited when I realized it was someone I had never met before. I e-mailed him back with some answers to his questions and also a request to meet in person – hoping to get to know him. He hasn’t responded yet, but we’re praying for him and the chance to meet him!

Internet evangelism has an increasing role in Cru movements. It aids us with netting the Christian students and curious seekers out there who are isolated and too shy to reach out. We can see when a UMD student visits the site– and when they ask a question we get a name. If we get to meet them, then it’s a God-given opportunity to be a part of the process of “grafting them in” to the body of Christ.

One of the strong truths of the verses above is that Christianity is extremely difficult if not impossible to practice in isolation – without “someone to explain it to you”. Please pray that God will continue to use us and tools like everystudent.com to find and connect with the isolated students struggling to survive. With your prayers and support, may we see this student and countless others become members of God’s eternal family!

Grateful to serve,

                                                           

Matt & Rebecca Litchfield

Quick Update :)

Hello Faithful Prayer Warriors,

I just wanted to send you a quick note to update you on the current status of the relationship with the student I mentioned in March named "Brittney". This week I sent a second e-mail, after getting no response from the first one I sent awhile ago, asking her if she was still interested in coming to the Christian Fellowship student group. I heard back from her yesterday and she said that she will definitely be there and that she can't wait to meet new faces. Praise God! I'm so happy that God has given us another opportunity to spend time with her!

Please be praying that Brittney is able to come as planned and that she would experience God's love in a way that would redirect her to be His child. Thank you so much for your faithful prayers. I look forward to updating you after Thursday's meeting.

Your Sister in Christ,
Rebecca Litchfield

Wrestling with Simplicity, Introduction

A convergence of ideas has occurred in my mind recently.

Our team, as a form of development and bonding, reads a chapter of the book Authentic Communication by Tim Muehlhoff and then we discuss its implications for our ministry during staff meetings. (Excellent book by the way, well worth the read!!)Well, several weeks ago we talked about an idea presented in his book that if we intend to make an impact on people then what we do needs to have low predictability while retaining high information. Muehlhoff suggests that we need to act, speak, and present our perspective in a way that challenges the assumptions made about "our kind" while still offering valuable information about who Christ actually is and what we actually believe. As you may know, I am always a fan of low predictability, so this idea naturally got me thinking.

The next marker on the way to the convergence happened in a conversation with some of my students. In talking about evangelism, the Four Spiritual Laws came up (not surprising amongst Cru members). The students suggested that the booklet they had all learned to use was too simple, and that it wasn't working well with students. They liked internalizing it so that they had a basic road map of the Gospel in their minds, but they felt they needed something more for the students they shared their faith with.

A couple of days later, I remembered a study I learned about in Sociology class. The study looked at social groups and the commitment levels and/or responsibilities placed on members to see the correlation between the two. Researchers assumed that a low-level commitment at entry level increasing over time would make for the most loyal membership in a group. The study found, however, that a range of higher commitment levels actually had the best chance of producing loyal members, implying that people actually preferred a sense of buy-in or strong commitment to a group their joining.

Finally, this past weekend, I read Epic by John Eldredge (another FANTASTIC book, while we're at it!). The book presents the Story of God and shows how all the stories we love mimic this one, great Story. In four sections he presents the Gospel message in terms of story elements like hero, villain, battle, struggle, hope, victory, and happily ever after. The presentation moved me immensely - I felt so inspired and motivated to live for God and to "play my role" in the story! I wanted to join in battle to win human hearts for God, despite it sounding much harder than the generic "go out and share your faith" kind of exhortation.

These four things have converged in my mind. So far the I can only say that I think the Four Laws is too simple for today's generation. Not that they aren't true, but that they're a model of presentation,  parts of a story rather than a story. And that, I think, is the issue. Would you rather read a textbook on the parts of a narrative or a narrative? Which one would move you and become a favorite on your bookshelf? Stories move us because the parts are woven into a whole and built into a moving symphony of ideas, while the textbook teaches us to understand a story and even retell it, but is not a story itself.

So, over the next few days, I'm going to try and think and write and post about this. About balancing simplicity of truth with beauty of composition and trying to contextualize the "basics" of the Gospel in a way that moves those I share it with. Maybe I'm wrong to be thinking this way - let me know your perspectives! But before you toss out my ideas completely, consider the following: If story isn't meant to be a part of our efforts, then why did Jesus speak mainly in parables?

Evangelism Story and Prayer Request

Hello Ministry Family,

I just thought I'd drop a note to tell you about a cool thing God did today and to send along a prayer request. This afternoon, I met up with Katelyn, a fellow Cru staff member, to do some evangelism on campus at UMASS Dartmouth. We met to pray, and we decided that our goal was to have one good conversation that went past the basic survey that we were asking. We thought in order to achieve this we would probably need to plan on speaking to about four different students, hoping that at least one of the conversations would take off. Little did we know that God was about to show us how much He is in control, and we are just to be obedient and go out to share our faith and He'd take care of who we talked to and the end product of us going out.

Soularium

God sailed past our expectations, we never thought the first student we talked to would be such a long and fruitful conversation. We spoke to a freshman girl on campus for about an hour. We started by doing a picture survey, called soularium, which was created by Campus Crusade students on a summer project in NY. She was so open to share about her past, present and future goals as we worked through the survey asking her questions about what her current life situation was like, what she wished it was, her description of God, her spiritual background and what she hoped her spiritual journey included. Katelyn was able to share with her about having divorced parents, and create common ground with her there. The freshman girl was a joy to talk to, and I'm currently learning to follow the Holy Spirit's guiding while creating a positive environment for trust building with the students instead of forcing the direction of the conversations towards a decision about Christ every time, because they honestly might not be ready. Unfortunately we did not get into the presentation of the Gospel, but both Katelyn and I were able to tell a little of our testimonies about why we were on staff with Cru Ministries (which did include, God and His Son Jesus and God's role in our lives and decisions). Also as we were parting ways we invited her to the student group on campus, Christian Fellowship. She said that her grandmother is a Christian, so she is open to it and really wanted to stop by. We also exchanged e-mail addresses :). When we sat down with her she was reading a book about finding healing, and I hope that in God's time she'll find it through her Savior Jesus Christ. For now lets call her Brittney, so that I can refer back to her later. Please keep her in your prayers. I really hope to see her this Thursday.

College is a time where so many decisions are made. For Brittney she is on a path trying to figure out her path to inner-healing, and future total enlightenment. Our goal as Christians is to meet them where they are at and answer their questions on the road to the cross. We covet your prayers so much. Thank you for making this all possible. Please keep Matt and I in your prayers. Pray that we continue to get time on campus evangelizing to the precious students that God wants to bring into His family.

To God be the Glory,
Rebecca Litchfield

March Prayer Letter

Hello All!

I regrettably forgot to post our last newsletter on here! I am so sorry to those of you who only look for electronic updates! Here it is!

God Bless,
Matt

And Jesus came up and spoke to them, saying, “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”

 - Matthew 28:18-20

March 1, 2012

Dear Ministry Family,

Two young men that Matt meets with

 - no stripes are not a required dress 

code to meet with Matt.

Jesus spoke the Great Commission before ascending into heaven to a crowd of people including His most devoted followers. The Savior of the world had spent thirty-three years on earth, three of which had been fully devoted to ministry and Gospel-planting. He had spoken to countless crowds full of thousands of hungry souls. Often, though, I have wondered what (other than His divine omniscience) gave Him the confidence that some of that final crowd would listen and obey. How did He know the mission would move forward? Or, more appropriately, what had He done to ensure it?

Acts answers this question, as do the Gospels, by simply pointing to a small group of men who Christ had invested higher levels of effort in. These men, selected by Christ, appointed by the Father (Mark tells us Jesus prayed before calling the apostles), and eventually filled by the Holy Spirit had caught the “full fever” of Jesus’ vision and were the first “operatives” in Jesus’ global mission. Three years had shown them His character, His heart, and His intent for the world, and by the time of His ascension they had made His vision their own.

Reading this out of the Gospels has driven us to make discipleship an ever-increasing part of our role on campus. Meeting with students, caring about and pouring into their lives, teaching them, wrestling with the Truths of Scripture, showing them Jesus vision and helping them realize that they, too, can aid in advancing it, and showing them how God has specifically equipped them is – I believe – one of the most powerful parts of Church Age life. I am one believer, and even on my most sold-out, fired-up days I am still just one person. But, if a portion of my time is given over to meeting with even two students regularly and helping them see why I’m sold out for Jesus’ vision and why they ought to be as well, then I’m multiplying myself, making three where there was one. 

Two of the Christian Fellowship girls

 that God laid on Rebecca’s heart, 

with Arnie, the university’s mascot. 

Pray for us about this area called discipleship, please! Pray specifically that God will show us who to meet with, how to reach out to them, what to work on, and, ultimately, that God will bless our efforts by turning those students around and having them do the same and select others to pour into. I (Matt) currently meet with seven college men who I love working alongside and devouring Scripture with – pray that I can effectively meet their differing needs and care for their lives individually. Rebecca currently meets with three college women and is praying about three more whom God has laid on her heart. Pray for the launch of these new relationships as well as the continued deepening of the ones she has. Also, please pray that God will continue to help us balance this part of our job with the others, such as evangelism, training, etc.

Thank you for your efforts to empower us with spiritual and physical resources. You truly have freed us up to do this work and it blesses us so much to have you serving with us. May God continue to bless your faithfulness and continue to guide all our efforts for His Kingdom.

Your Fellow Laborers,

Matt & Rebecca Litchfield