Our gig at North Central Technical in Wausau, Wisconsin:

Deborah Graff was our main contact for the NCT as well as our host! We also got to meet her two daughters, Lindsay and Courtney, who actually help her mom out with the Crusade chapter at NCT since there aren’t a lot of student leaders there to help with the movement right now.

During our debrief time, Lindsay explained to us that the previous semester there had been a good number of students and some momentum to their movement. But come this semester almost everybody left and their numbers dwindled down to four students and it felt like they were starting all over again from scratch.

Being a two-year college makes it extremely difficult for them to have any sort of continuity in the chapter, so it was a huge help to them to have us do a concert on their campus to help them gain momentum for their movement.

Lindsay also told us that she and her mother really didn’t know what to expect when they asked us to come in. They just thought we were some group and were unsure of the quality of our band. She said she was quite pleasantly surprised to find that we were a professional group and was quite happy about that. Sweet!

To her that spoke volumes about the credibility of Keynote’s ministry, the quality of ministry service we have to offer those we partner with, and the effectiveness of using a Keynote band, especially on a campus such as theirs.

They gained 12 contacts, which isn’t a huge number, but considering it’s triple the amount of students they have in their chapter right now, it is a big deal!

They were able to give out about 10 FSK’s (Freshman Survival Kits) and free popcorn to dozens of people. Written on the popcorn bags were the meeting times and places for Crusade, which was a great way to advertise their weekly meetings and raise awareness of their presence on campus.

They also had people fill out quick spiritual surveys, most of which indicated positive responses to at least wanting to know more about Crusade.

After the show Deborah said that things like this never happen at NCT so it will definitely create a buzz on campus for weeks to come and be a great conversation starter with students to talk about God and hopefully invite them to Crusade.

We were even featured in the school’s video announcements and also included in their October 3rd edition of “College Connection,” a campus wide flyer of announcements and happenings on campus.

The announcement read:

“Blue Sky Nine Concert at NTC! Watch for the Blue Sky Nine concert in the NTC courtyard during the noon hour on Tuesday, Oct. 4. This acoustic band concert is sponsored by Campus Crusade for Christ. Come and check it out! Campus Crusade for Christ will meet from 12-12:50p.m. on Tuesdays & Wednesdays in Room F206. Watch the TV monitors for future dates.”

Sweet!

A lot of the school faculty also came out to hear us play and gave Deborah a lot of good feedback. That’s huge! They were definitely glad that Deborah had organized this event and hoped for more things like this to happen in the future.

After the show Kevin and I talked about the response of the school faculty and thought that maybe God is doing something different on the campus here that might not have to do so much with the students as it might be with the faculty. And maybe we should get some Crusade staff to reach out to the faculty on campus! Who knows?? Just a thought.

Please pray for more student leaders to be raised up there and for their numbers to grow. Pray for the contacts that they call to be good ones who have a genuine interest in getting to know Christ or coming to Crusade.


Cool things that happened:
I had a cool conversation with Nick, a freshman at the school who had walked just after we finished our concert. I invited him over to the Crusade table to pick up a free FSK and put him in touch with Lindsay, who actually already knew who he was. Praise God!

He said that he had grown up religious but came to the realization that he didn’t need church to “follow the way,” as he put it. When I asked him what he meant by “following the way,” he couldn’t really give me a straight answer, other than being a good person and doing good things.

Later on, Lindsay told me that he had a Catholic background but was afraid to say that for some reason. I wish I had challenged him more and been able to share with him what the message of the bible is and what “following the way” really means, if indeed, he was talking about following Jesus’ way. Please say a prayer for Nick.

As we were praying before our show, a lady walked over to us and asked if we were believers. She had been looking for Crusade on campus and was hoping to get involved again. It was cool to see God to just use our very presence there to help someone get connected! Praise the Lord!

A woman named Wendy came up to me while were breaking down our equipment and asked about booking our band in the future. I gave her one of our new nifty business cards and said she could contact us to set something up, so who knows? Future gig! Sweet!

This entry was posted by Christopher Wu, on Monday, October 10, 2005. You can leave your response.