As recent news has revealed, Campus Crusade for Christ will be officially changing their name in 2012 to cru. The process of changing the ministry name was officially begun by the insisting of the founder, Bill Bright, who discussed with his wife and several others that he believed that the current name was limiting the ministry. The official process began two years ago and the new name was announced a couple nights ago at our staff conference in Colorado. The name change process was begun because top leaders in ministry believed that the word "campus" and the word "crusade" were limiting the ministry's ability to adequately live up to their mission. Since CCC is now more than a campus ministry, it did not make sense for the global name to still only refer to it as such. In addition, the word "crusade" carries a fairly negative context in our society today. Because of these two things, the ministry began to poll and research different kinds of names and their effectiveness of describing CCC's mission.
Campus Crusade for Christ's vision statement is "Helping to build spiritual movements everywhere so that everyone knows someone who truly follows Jesus Christ." That vision statement is not and will not be changing. CCC is just as dedicated to spreading the gospel and the good news of Jesus Christ. Since the name change was officially announced, critics have accused the ministry of several things such as "being watered down Christians", "being ashamed of Christ" and trying to be "politically correct so as to get more donors." I can tell you this is not the case for their staff. Taking Christ out of the ministry name only gives us as staff an even greater opportunity to live out the gospel daily and display Christ's name through our lives. Although this negative feedback has been fairly damaging to the name of the CCC ministry thusfar, Steve Sellers, the vice president, put the situation in excellent light. He said that even if cru gets a black eye, someone's name is in the news now more than ever in recent memory, the name of Jesus Christ. The only name that truly matters.
If you want to know more about the name change, please visit www.ccci.org or feel free to contact me! I also strongly encourage you to go to Fox News and watch the Fox and Friends interview with Steve Sellers that occurred this morning.
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