Sharing My Story

This rather breathless account is taken from my May 1972
prayer letter shortly before Explo 72.

"There we expect more than 100,000 high school and college
students and laymen plus internationals to take pat in a week
of intensive training in how to experience a more abundant
and fulfilling Christian life. They will also be trained in how
to share their faith in Christ in a more effective way. During
the week all 100,000 people will go out into the Dallas area
to witness of their faith in Jesus Christ.

We believe that Explo '72 has the potential to be the greatest
spiritual event since Pentecost. We pray that the long term
effects will be even greater than the event itself. The follow
through strategy for Explo called Operation Penetration
calls for each delegate at Explo to ask God for 5 people to
be trained in the abundant Christian life and evangelism
during the rest of the summer at various locations around
the nation. We believe there will be a force of 600,000
people in America who will be making the living Christ
a real issue in our national life by summer's end. This could
be the start of the greatest spiritual awakening this country
and the world has ever seen."

There was a real sense of spiritual expectancy at that time.
With the Vietnam War and the counterculture movement
the country was in a spiritual crisis and he time was ripe for
God's spirit to move in a major way.

This is some excerpts from my June 1972 written after I
arrive back from Dallas Texas.

"Explo 72...was a fantastic, unforgettable experience that
enriched my own life as well as literally tens of thousands
of other people from all over the nation and across the world.

I believe that the greatest single factor about Explo '72 was
that it was an impossible task looking at it from man's perspective.
The 3000 member staff of Campus Crusade did not create Explo '72
and should not receive the glory for it. God should receive all the
glory because He was the one who made it all possible and by
His Spirit He will sustain the momentum of Explo in the hearts
of each of its participants.

I was involved in behind the scenes activities for the most part.
As I mentioned in my last letter Gene Frink and I shared the
supervision of taping of 8 different conference sites in the
southern part of Dallas (there were over 60 separate conferences
at Explo). What we did was to go around to each conference
and clean, demagnetize the conference tape recorder so be
could obtain good quality recordings. I personally had three
conferences; one at bishop College (a Black-Campus conference
and a high school conference. This give me an overview of what
was happening that only a few others were able to receive. We
also went each day to every conference to pick up the previous
day's recordings and to assist the recording people with any
problem that they might have had.

The other area that I was given responsibility for was the
devising and producing of overhead transparencies. We did
a great many of them before Explo and the trip to Dallas,
but there were 800-900 to do in Dallas only a few days
before the conference began. All told there was between
3,000-4,000 overhead transparency sheets prepared for
Explo. Even though these were my main activities at Explo
I found that just being available to do many tasks other
than these was a rewarding experience."

I remember the hot ride to Dallas through the southwest
desert country without air conditioning in my car. Also
Dallas was hot and sweaty. I stopped to see some relatives
in Las Cruces, New Mexico on the way to Dallas. However,
this was certainly the greatest spiritual adventure of my
life up to that point. More on Explo next time.