The Steiner Dispatch

About Us

Stephen and Karen Steiner are on staff with Campus Crusade for Christ, an interdenominational ministry that seeks to bring the good news of Jesus Christ to college campuses around the world. Once they are done raising their additional support, they will be working with the Indiana Cru team reaching and spiritually building up college students across Indiana. Indiana Cru is currently active on 25 of the 104 campuses in Indiana. We are praying that with Gods help we can bring this number to 50 campuses that we are active on over the next few years. We will be helping in this effort, as well as with… (Click Here to Read The Rest).

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Stephen and Karen Steiner are on staff with Campus Crusade for Christ, an interdenominational ministry that seeks to bring the good news of Jesus Christ to college campuses around the world. Once they are done raising their initial support, they will be working with the Indiana Cru team reaching and spiritually building up college students across Indiana. Indiana Cru is currently active on 25 of the 104 campuses in Indiana. We are praying that with Gods help we can bring this number to 50 campuses that we are active on over the next few years. We will be helping in this effort, as well as with…

Celebrating Christmas @ IUPUI

Hi guys! A little while ago we celebrated Christmas with our international friends at Indiana University/Purdue University Indianapolis. We listened to the Christmas story read by someone else on our team there, and watched an animated Christmas movie while making Gingerbread (or rather graham cracker) houses. It was a lot of fun, here are some pictures of that. Those of you who get are letter knew we would be posting these because we promised them in the letter. If you don’t get our letters about our adventures in the Great Lakes Regional Office, and with Bridges International @ IUPUI, let us know by sending one of us a Facebook message, or an e-mail. We love you guys, let us know if there is anyway we can be praying for you all.

Steve & Karen

Thanksgiving @ IUPUI

Yesterday you saw a video of us preparing for Thanksgiving at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI). As we were shopping we wanted to take a moment to let you know what we were getting ready for, and thank you for your financial and prayer support that allows us to reach out to international students. Today we are posting another video and some pictures of the IUPUI Thanksgiving dinner.

A big part of what Karen and I do with Bridges International at IUPUI is follow up with students, and build relationships with them. While Karen and I didn’t have a chance to meet with every student that came this year, we did talk to 12 students that want us to contact them for follow up. There were also other Cru staff that came just for this event to connect with students as well. You can expect to hear more about that in our next letter… if you aren’t receiving our letter and want to then just let us know. Here are the pictures and a video.

In the video you will see the Cinnamon Cider that we are making, as well as our friends Kiya and Yannick from the Ivory Coast who were helping us get set up.

There aren’t many pictures because we were very busy during the event but we have a few of students eating and things like that.

Preparing for Thanksgiving

Wow, it takes a lot to make a thanksgiving meal, even more so when you are feeding 75-100 internationals. However that is what we did more than a week ago at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI). We invited all the international students to come experience an American thanksgiving and while it was hard to keep count of how many people were there with all the students coming and going, we had at least 75 internationals come, and there could easily have been as many as 100. We will tell you more tomorrow about how it went, but for now here is a video from when we were preparing for it.

Preparing for Thanksgiving from Steve & Karen Steiner on Vimeo.

Campus Crusade for Christ is becoming Cru

Dear family, friends, and supporters. You may have heard recently that Campus Crusade for Christ, in the US, is going to be changing our name to Cru (with the tagline “A caring community passionate about connecting people to Jesus Christ.”) in early 2012. This is true. It is something that even Bill Bright talked about us needing to do while Campus Crusade for Christ was becoming a worldwide movement. You can find more information about the name change here www.ccci.org/cru.

We are changing the name for a few reasons. One reason is because Crusade, while a perfectly acceptable name 60 years ago, now has negative connotations. Think about it, when we chose that name, evangelists like Billy Graham and others went on Crusades. Protestant Christianity recognized this word as something that meant that we were going to reach the lost, and by the power of Christ, to draw people to him. Now many people aren’t as familiar with this concept. Most people these days really only have one strong lingering memory of the word Crusade. Many on hearing it reflect back on when they learned in school about The Crusades, that barbaric battle waged by the Catholic Church many many years ago in God’s name. On hearing this name, they wonder why we would ever choose a name that has Crusade in it. It is something I have personally encountered a few times, and it acts as a barrier to the very people we want to connect with.

Another reason that we are changing the name is because, in the US, we have many ministries that aren’t just for college students. Because these ministries are under the banner (so to speak) of Campus Crusade for Christ however, adults will sometimes shy away from them. Again, it is acting as a barrier to some of the very people we want to reach.

Recently however a few media sources (Fox News, Glenn Beck) have criticized Campus Crusade for Christ for this new name, because it no longer has Christ in it. Please remember friends, that there are many great mission organizations in the United States, and most of them don’t have Christ or Jesus in their name. As an organization, we are not hiding our mission; we are and will remain a transparent and openly Christian organization, seeking to take the message of Christ everywhere. Removing campus and crusade from our name has nothing to do with moving away from Jesus, it has everything to do with moving toward those we are trying to reach. The problematic words were Campus and Crusade, and we chose this new name because since the 90′s it has been used as a nickname on many of our campuses. We have noticed during that time that it didn’t carry the negative connotations that our current name has.

The way we run our campus ministries as we have been using this name since the 90′s hasn’t changed. We continued to build students up and their faith, and to train them in starting spiritual conversations with fellow students. We train them in evangelism not only so that they can reach fellow students on their campuses but so they can have a more effective personal ministry when they graduate and join the workforce.

It is unfortunate that these media sources chose to do a story on us without all the facts, however our mission is the same one that was given to Bill and Vonette Bright 60 years ago, to help fulfill the Great Commission, and to give every person a chance to say YES to Jesus.

“Blessed is the one who trusts in the LORD, whose confidence is in him. He will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream. It does not fear when heat comes; its leaves are always green. It has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear fruit.” (Jer. 17:7-8)

Today as an organization, Campus Crusade for Christ has faced a little heat. However we will not be afraid, because our confidence has been in God Himself from day one. We continue to trust him today. We have been seeking the Lord through the process of choosing this new name, and we are confident that God has led us to this name. We are also confident that he will guide us through some of the choppy waters we’re navigating this week.

Reaching Out to the Hurting

A few weeks ago my wife an I were in Ohio, back on the campus I went to college at, helping some of the students there with their ministry. Since I rarely have an opportunity to be there, it was exciting to be back. One of the things we did was go out and looked for students who had some time, and asked if we could talk with them. One of the students that we talked to has been in the back of my mind, and in the conversations that my wife and I has had since.

It was toward the end of the day that we were planning on spending there, and we decided we were going to talk with one more student. My wife and one of the student leaders there found someone who looked like she wasn’t busy and approached her and in the beginning I sat nearby watching what was happening from afar. “Hi, we’re with Campus Crusade, a Christian group on campus and we were wondering if you would be willing to do a quick survey with us” the student leader said. Right away this student was engaging, but concerned that she would somehow mess up what we were looking for in our conversation.

After a few minutes talking with her, we learned that she had been married to a pastor. She had kids, and her marriage was not a safe one. She was abused and eventually for the safety of her and her kids, she got a divorce. She said that she tried to give God a chance, she went to other churches, but even in these different churches, she wasn’t seeing this God of goodness that Christians believed in, and that she so desperately needed. She asked “How can God allow little children to be molested, without doing anything. Can’t he at least have a pizza delivery guy go to the wrong house?” It was clear that this was very personal to her.

We had a good conversation that day, she was very open to talking. she wasn’t vindictive, or angry at Christians, but she had been hurt, and while she was willing to continue the conversation about God there with other students with Campus Crusade, she was not able to trust in God’s goodness, and I pray that someday she will be able to.

This is a situation that many different Christians might approach differently, and honestly, I don’t think that there is a perfect way for anyone to reach out to someone who is hurting. I also believe that if we are walking in the spirit, then God will help give us direction, he will give us the words to say, even when we don’t know what to say. That being said, I would like to hear from you, how would you have talked to her.

As we have shared this experience we have heard some different thoughts. One thought was to just tell her the truth. To remind her that this is a sinful world, and innocents will be hurt in it. To ask her if anyone prayed for the children who are being molested. I don’t think we would have been able to do that however, she was hurt, she didn’t need truth right now, she needed love. Another thought was to sympathise with her. To tell her that these are hard issues, that to be honest even I struggle with sometimes, but to also tell her that we know God is a God of love, and that we can trust him. How about you, how have you reached out to hurting people before, and how would you reach out to her.

This post originally appeared on seventy8 Productions. Click Here to view the original article.

Other Blogs

Hi guys, Steve here. Did you know that there are other blogs that I write in. It hasn’t been happening much as it is relatively new, but I write for my work blog which is zerocanvas.com. This is a resource for Campus Crusade staff, and there I write about tech stuff, including practical things that they should be doing. Soon I will also be writing there more about how they can utilize technology to make ministry easier, or do things that they may not have previously thought about. In addition, I also write for seventy8productions.com. seventy8 Productions was something that Jeremy Smith and I started back when we were both volunteers for Youth for Christ in Bluffton OH. Now we strive to make it a free resource for people involved in student ministries everywhere. It isn’t a formal organization of any type, it is just a few people who want to take the experience and knowledge that they have and share it with others. You can read some the posts I have written with seventy8 Productions by visiting this link http://www.seventy8productions.com/author/steve/. I also plan on cross posting some of the things I post else where here.

Dying Egg’s and Talking about Resurrection Sunday at IUPUI

This has been a busy week, we only have two weeks left before our summer assignment, and in the office there is still so much to do. Right now I am trying to connect with as many of our office staff as possible to make sure that their computer’s are in good working order going into this summer, this way they are hopefully equipped to continue strong in our summer assignments when I am not there to help them full time. It has been rewarding to train them in how to take better care of their computer and fixing the small problems they have.

Also many of you might have heard about this but when Karen was still working at Steak N’ Shake full time, she led one of her co-workers to Christ. Today he went to Church with us and was baptized. Please pray for Brian to grow in his faith. He is a little mentally disabled, so pray for us as we work to connect him with people here in Indianapolis who can help him be better connected with the church, and grow better in his relationship with Christ.

Finally, at IUPUI this week, we talked with the international students during Bible Study about the Resurrection of Christ, and why it was important. Then during conversation club afterwards, we dyed eggs, since it is something a lot of Americans do around this time of year. Here are some pictures below.

Playing Taboo at IUPUI

Have you ever wondered what would happen if you played Taboo with international student’s who are still learning the language? We found out today after our Bible Study when we had our conversation club, and played taboo with the international students who came to our Bridges meeting. It was a great (though sometimes slightly confusing) opportunity for us all to have fun and learn more about Christ, each other, and english. Here is the proof.

Learning about the 50 States at IUPUI

Lately in our Bible Study at IUPUI we have been talking about things that new Christians need to know as they follow Christ, and during the conversation club afterwards today, we talked about something else that people new to the United States need to know about. We talked about our 50 states. We took turns reading some facts about each of our 50 states, our international friends got a chance to practice their english, and I think we all learned something. For instance, did you know that ice cream cones were invented in Missouri. Here are some pictures.