Sharing My Story

(I interrupt my Campus Crusade account with
a more immediate report of my life)

How can on sum up an experience like a modern
Comic Book convention that swells to the size of a
small city over a four day period? How can one
describe the ebb and flow of surging crowds that
are in such a hurry to go--where? The Comic Con
International: San Diego is a cultural phenomenon
that acts both as a barometer of popular culture
and an influence of that culture.

This weekend (July 24-27, 2008) I attended the
39th San Diego Comic-Con. I attended with several
purposes. Most central is my involvement in the
Christian Comic Arts Society. This time we extended
our small press table for the 12th year. We were
flanked on each side by representatives of other
spiritual traditions, Diablo Publishing and Necroscope.
Curious passersby surreptitiously snapped digital
photos of this seemingly odd confluence of soulish
persuasions. Our tracts and other freebies found
ready acceptance and flew off the table. Also our
book sales were much better than last year. Numerous
Christian believers who stopped by were encouraged
by what they saw. Even Superman who claimed to be
a Baptist stopped by for a visit. It was his 70th
anniversary. He didn't look a day over 40.

We also had a CCAS sponsored "Spirituality in Comics"
panel. We make efforts to diversity our panelists and
our move in that different this year was Holly Golightly,
the happy and bright red-haired wiccan, who has written
Sabrina the Teen aged Witch. This panel perhaps covered
familiar territory but it did provide food for thought for
those unaccustomed to thinking in terms of the deeper
nature of popular media.

Saturday CCAS sponsored our first open forum get together
of Christian fans and creators. We didn't know what to
expect but there was a good turn out of mostly young
people (and rightly so) where introductions were made
with a brief summary of CCAS history followed by an
unstructured time of visiting. This could very well become
another CCAS convention tradition.

The next morning we had our traditional Sunday chapel
service. Robert Luedke, writer/artist of the Eye Witness
graphic novel series, gave an excellent devotional that
ended up challenging the audience to make comics,
graphic novels, artwork, costume design, sculpture and
other creative projects for next year's convention. Kevin
Yong video tapped the session as well as the Spirituality
in Comics panel the day before. This was followed by a panel
lead by Leo Partible that discussed trends and happenings
with the Christian comics field. On the panel were Luedke,
Robert Flores, Sergio Cariello, Clint Johnson and Jerrell
Conner. This was likewise a very good panel with the
participants grappling with issues of how to do comics
from the heart of a Christian believer.

As with all conventions the four days slipped away into
the files of memory and lots of good and not so good
digital photos. Overall this was a very encouraging
experience for everyone.

(This is my short convention report--a longer one
should follow in the not too distance future.)

I wrote this in my July 1972 prayerletter.

"We at Arrowhead springs are still involved with the staggeringly
immense "fallout" from Explo '72. Most recently as you well know
there were the three nationally broadcast television programs
on Explo sponsored by Campus Crusade. These programs gave
an excellent capsule view of the highlightsof what went on during
the week of June10-17 in Dallas. In the next several weeks I will
have the privilege of helping to process the massive influx of mail
we receive in response to the TV programs.

Those of you who saw the programs noted the enthusiastic
(meaning full of absorbing, lively interest, lit. possessed of God)
high school and college age youngsters who were there. This
demostration of joy was not staged especially for the TV audience
but I believe was an actual moving of the Spirit of God in the
lives of each individual there. While you could see it on TV you
had to be there to understand fully the impact that this congress
had on the lives of the delegates. Often times we see pictures or
old movies of the mass Nazi rallies in the 1930s and the
Communist and New Left with their demonstrations and riots.
It is wonderfully refreahing and thrilling to see thousands upon
thousands of young Christians standing up for the Truth that
is Jesus Christ. A great army of God on the march to share the
love and forgiveness of Jesus Christ with the world! For once
the energy of so many of our youth is being channeled into a
good and constructive course, Jesus Christ wasmade the real
issue in Dallas and many people's lives were changed this week."

Some of the results were "Over 6000 people received Christ
as Savior due to the witnessing of the delegates." Also "There
were 10 million piecess of literature give out. There were over
200 Christian organizations represented in the exhibit area.
Nearly 10,000 delegates indicated a desire to go into Christian service."

I recently found this on the internet,

"Maynard Pittendreigh, who attended the event as a recent
high school graduate, did a limited study when working on
his Master of Divinity degree in which he analyzed the
long-term effects of large scale evangelistic events.
Gathering information from churches from South Carolina
that had sent youth groups to the event, he was able to
demonstrate that more than 60% of those participants
had entered the ordained ministry, were engaged in
theological training, or had become missionaries.


David Scott, writing for the May, 2005, edition of
Christianity Today, documented the effects Explo ‘72
had on Pope John Paul II. As a cardinal in Poland,
the future Pope was heavily influenced toward evangelistic
efforts by Joe Losiak, a Polish American student who
had attended Explo ‘72 and introduced its concepts to
Roman Catholic officials in Poland."

http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/EXPLO-%2772

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.

One of the major things about Campus Crusade during that
period was a sense of big ideas and big goals. Dr. Bill Bright
often said that small plans do not inflame the hearts of men.
Dr Bright thought big and continued to believe God for big
goals throughout his life. His goal was to see the Great Commission
fulfilled within this generation. The Great Commission as he defined
it Biblically was to have everyone on earth have an opportunity
to clearly hear the Christian message and be able to respond to it.
Bill Bright and the CCC leadership prayerfully decided to qualify
the "our generation" within a very specific time frame. The completion
of the Great Commission in the United States was set for 1976 and
the world by 1980.

This were audicous goals and goals that could only be
fulfilled with Divine blessing and enablement. As mentioned
previously the primary Campus Crusade witnessing/discipleship
strategy was based on the cell or small group multiplication concept.
This concept was Biblically based and was used by Christ himself
with the disciples and the early Church. One of the texts that was
used a great deal during that time was the book Master Plan for
Evangelism. The basic idea was members of small groups
(action groups on campus) who form their own groups from
individuals who they had lead to Christ. These groups served
as training and teaching centers for the members who would
then share Christ and start their own groups from those who
responded to the gospel and desired to become disciples.

In order to jumb start this discipleship process which was
working well on college and university campus and begin
the process of meeting the above Great Commission goals
strong emphasis was placed on the International Student
Congress of Evangelism or Explo '72 which would be held
in Dallas, Texas in June 12-17, 1972. Much of my first year
on Campus Crusade staff centered around in one way or
another around getting ready for Explo '72.

Explo was seen as a catalysis for seeing the cell or group
discipleship plan implemented on a national and international
basis. Perhaps the major difficulty that i saw with the total
literal fulfillment of this plan was the number of
language/dialect groups in the world that did not have any
scripture translated into their languages (or even a written
language to read) and the years it takes to construct a written
language (and teach the people to read) and translate the
scriptures into those languages. However even with those
issues in mind I commited myself as a CCC staff member
to see the Great Commission fulfilled as much as possible
within an early time frame.

Early on in my Campus Crusade experience I responded to
an emotional appeal given at one of our all staff meetings
by a staff member named Lou Hurley who had developed
a ministry to the inhabitants of Convalescent Hospitals.
I became quickly invovled as a Sunday worker at a specific
hospital in nearby Highland, California (just east of San
Bernardino). Here is an excerpt from my April 1972 newsletter.

"I would like to tell you about another personal ministry that
I have been in for several months. One of the newest works of
Campus Crusade is the Convalescent Hospital Ministry. This
work just gained official status in November of last year. In
this we are involved with a segment of society that is often
shunned, "put away', lonely and in real need of love and concern.
Most of the people in the convalent hospitals are elderly who
are weak in either mind or body. This is a real ministry of love
where the spiritual fruit of kindness, gentleness and patience
are vitally needed by the worker. Our ministry is twofold.
Firstly, he have a short chapel service on Sunday for the
patients with singing favorite old hymns, a short message,
prayer, and sometimes special music. Secondly, for bed-ridden
patients we have 'bed-side evangelism' in which we can share
Christ in a more personal way than is possible in a large group
and pray with and read scripture to the patients who are
already believers. Many people believe that the elderly are
almost impossible to reach for Christ. This may be true for
some, but at the hospital I am at over 40 have received
Christ as Savior in the last year. I ask your prayers for
wisdom in dealing with the patients and their problems.
Problems that only Christ can solve."

My part time work in the hospital would last around 4-5 years
and was overall a very good experience of ministry. I initially
worked with fellow Washingtonian Dick Berg (who was involved
in Grounds maintenance at Arrowhead Springs) and his eventual
wife Becky. Oddly enough a number of my supporters in
Washington developed an interest in this aspect of my work
more than some of the other parts. Perhaps they could relate
to the problems of the elderly better. With the large aging
population in America this more of a concern than ever.