Campus Crusdae for Christ changes name to 'Cru' [guest post]

New logo

Mark & Roxanne serve on staff with Cru.  Wooster Grace partners with them as they seek to share Christ with university students at Indiana University--Bloomington.  I asked Mark to share about the recent name change from Campus Crusade for Christ to Cru on this blog.

Over the past weeks there have been stories posted by Glenn Beck and FoxNews (and other secular and religious media outlets) criticizing the name change.  Some of the stories posted in major media outlets have been less than accurate.  There has been growing concern in both traditional and social media that we have lost our way and are seeking to make a politically correct name change.  These concerns stem mainly from the fact that "Christ" is no longer in our name.

If you would like to hear from our organization itself, our vice president, Steve Sellers, explained the name change on Fox and Friends Saturday morning, August 27.

Rox and I want you to know from the bottom of our hearts that the name change is not the result of a shift in our mission to fulfill the Great Commission.  On the contrary, we made the name change because we want to be more effective in bringing the gospel of Christ to the lost and broken of this world.  Research showed that 20% of nonbelievers who were interested in hearing more about Jesus would not want to talk with someone from Campus Crusade for Christ.  Another interesting find from the same study was that 9% of believers would not want to be a part of our ministry because of our name.  For clarity's sake, the off-putting part of our name was "Crusade", not Christ.  Through a process of diligent prayer and fasting over the last two years, the leaders of our ministry decided to take a risk instead of allowing 1 in 5 people to miss an opportunity to talk about Christ.

Here is also a great blog post that links to many different articles and blogs about the name change.