Sharing My Story

After returning home I plunged into my work as a part time student
and volunteer for Campus Crusade at Western. At that time Campus
Crusade had a very strong yet flexible organizational strategy for
doing ministry on college campuses. The head staff official was the
Campus Director (who reported to the area director who reported
to the National campus director and so forth). Western (WWSC) had
several campus crusade staff members Phil Fleming (director), Mike
Knetkowski (assistant director), and Lloyd Hawkins, my Sunday School
teacher. Each of these men were married and their wives were also
involved in the ministry. Phil headed up a Master Action Group with
the other staff members and several other students who had strong
leadership abilities. Each member of the Master action group had
their own action group (I was a member at different times in Lloyd's
and Mike's action group). It was the desired responsibility that each
action group member would have his own action group. (The women
had similar action groups that were headed up by the staff wives).
Bible study (going through the Campus Crusade material, "The
Transferable Concepts" was the basic study material), prayer and
encouragement took place in the action groups. We often "challenge"
each other to go out witnessing together on campus by doing
"randoms". Randoms were cold turkey sharing of the gospel often
by using the Student Religious Survey and then going into a
presentation of the Four Spiritual Laws. While such randoms
didn't often result in people coming to a Christian commitment
it did "sow the seed" and exposed the person shared with to the
gospel message. This was an exciting way (and somewhat scary)
of sharing because it actually got the gospel out to people who
needed to hear it on a personal one-to-one basis. As stated before
I had some experience doing this the previous summer witnessing
on the beaches in Southern California. Other methods were used
such as dormitory group talks, films and mass meetings.

We had both Josh McDowell and Andre Kole, the Illusionist
on our campus. Josh was a fiery orator was a passion for debate
and tackling the hard subjects of the times such as sex and
apologetic issues (the Resurrection and the reality of Christ).
Josh was right for the times—a revolutionary for Jesus. Josh
would later go on to be a popular author of books on Christian
apologetics and on Christ (More Than a Carpenter). Andre Kole
used his top flight illusion abilities to attract large crowds and
used that as a springboard for presenting the gospel. He was also
very timely as he touched on subjects as the occult and fake
spirituality. I produced a flyer that was handed out by the hundreds
and printed in the college newspaper for Josh's local campus
appearance. Besides my earlier comics that was some of the my
earliest art used for Christian purposes. One of the memorable
events was the conversion of David Erickson. David came from
a hard background and soon became a leader in the local ministry.
He later went on to Seminary and several as pastor in several
churches including my Bellingham home church, Immanuel Bible
Church.

Phil Fleming, the CCC campus director for Western had big ideas.
He envisioned seeing every student on Western's campus being
confronted by the gospel during that year of 1970-1971—the Great
Commission being fulfilled at Western. Bill Bright, the president
of Campus Crusade, often said that "small dreams don't inflame
the hearts of men." Phil's vision was large and it was exciting to
be a part of that ministry during that year. With many randoms,
small and large group events it was estimated that by the end of
the year perhaps only a few hundred students out of a campus of
8,000 had no been confronted with the gospel that year.