Christians are pretty strange people. They believe that the Bible isn’t just a book of nice children’s stories. They believe that this guy named Jesus who lived 2000 years ago was actually God. And for some reason they get up really early every Sunday morning to sing songs together and get yelled at.

Why?

Why would intelligent, rational people - Cornellians you live and work with - believe something so seemingly absurd? Is it just blind faith? Is it just a product of childhood indoctrination? Is Christianity just a coping mechanism?

Or is there something more?

What could motivate an overworked, under-rested college student to give up their Sunday mornings and Friday nights to go learn more about Jesus? What could motivate your friend to give up his or her summer to go help poor people in China or Africa? Or to spend Spring Break helping poor people in Ithaca, NY? What causes someone to reject the “American Dream” and devote their lives to helping and serving the poor throughout the world?

It actually all comes back to that Jesus guy.

Everybody worships something. It’s wired into us. We worship cars. We worship video games. We worship money. We worship status and fame and success. We worship stability and security and safety. We worship them in two ways: 1.) We praise them. We tell others how great they are. 2.) We get happiness from them. They give us satisfaction, and so we pursue them.

Christians believe that Jesus is the one that deserves to be worshiped above all other things. He is the one that really satisfies. He’s the one that gives us the most happiness. And, like other things that give us happiness, it makes perfect sense to tell other people about him AND to pursue him for ourselves.

Maybe one of your friends pointed you to this blog post. Maybe you saw a chalking or got a quartercard in the mail. It’s really easy to get turned off and think, “Oh, they’re just trying to convert me.” Well, you’re right, but you make it sound so negative, and it really is so, so positive.

Think of it this way: you really like juice. You drink a certain type of juice everyday. Your friend also really likes juice, but he drinks a different type. One day, he sees you drinking your juice and decides to try some. Immediately he realizes that his juice is so much better. Doesn’t it make sense for him to tell you about it and let you try some? Wouldn’t it be unloving of him not to tell you about it? Wouldn’t you want him to try to get you to start drinking his type of juice?

It’s the same way with Jesus. We’re all human. We’ve all lived life without Jesus. But now we’re living life with Jesus and telling you that it’s so much better this way. Really, from our perspective, it would be cruel and unloving NOT to tell you about him and show you how satisfying he is. And really, the superior satisfaction brought about by Jesus is so much greater than the satisfaction brought about by new juice. After all, who would give up their Sunday mornings and Friday nights for juice? Who would give up money and fame and security for juice? Clearly, there must be something about Jesus that causes people to do that - something that differentiates him from simply being “better juice”.

So we invite you to join us for Friday Night Live. It’s on October 12th at 7:30pm in Olin Hall 155. We’re going to do a couple of things. We’re going to hear a talk about who Jesus is - explaining a bit about this guy who we claim is the best thing about our lives. We’re also going to hear a hardcore atheist-turned-Christian share his story and explain just what about Jesus got him hooked. And yes, we have an awesome band who’ll be playing not-your-average-church-songs to give you a taste of what we usually do on Friday nights and articulate lyrically more about who Jesus is.

So yeah, it’s all about Jesus.

Welcome to the live beta of the new version of cornellcru.com! No, we won’t be like Google and be in beta forever. Just long enough to iron out the kinks and tweak the interface a bit.

You’ll notice a lot of new-things-that-aren’t-really-new right away. The “portal” (the page you get to when you go right to cornellcru.com) has been redesigned to offer more content:

• (1) Latest Blog Post - read a snippet from the latest blog post
• (2) Text Announcement - right below the 3 Picture-announcements is a new “text announcement” that we can use to highlight things we don’t have a.) pictures for yet or b.) enough picture space for
• (3) Search - Google-search all of cornellcru.com, from anywhere in cornellcru.com
• (4) Meta - this has been around for a while, but you a.) had to login to see it and b.) had to make the drop-down drop down. Here you can get access to all of our RSS feeds, look through listserv archives in the Google Group, and find our GCal cal. Check out the RSS Primer for help with feeds.
• (5) Calendar - Same as before, just bigger. That is, more events visible at once.

There are a handful of other new features scattered throughout the site…

• Search on every page
• “Units” now have a default page (well, most of them do), so you’ll avoid the infamous (and rather useless) “boxes” page
• (6) New “Media” section will store Video (Google Video and YouTube embeds) and Pictures (PicasaWeb embeds). If you have either of those that would be appropriate to put up, email me.
• (7) Wiki links and unified login - wiki.cornellcru.com (used by various ministry teams and planning teams) is now linked to on the left, if you’re logged in and have requested it to be added to your account. I’ve added it to many of your accounts - if I forgot you, email me. Also, by logging in to cornellcru.com, you log into the wiki as well. So you don’t have to enter your credentials three times (you still are going to hit the pop-up).

What I need from you:

1. Look through the site and let me know what you think. Feel free to leave a comment here or to email me. Look at the style more than the content (which will change a lot over the next few weeks).
2. Talk to me if there are blatant browser incompatibilities. That is, this is designed for/on Firefox 2 on Windows Vista, and also should work fine with IE7. If you’re using something else and are seeing something weird, email or IM me and I’ll try to fix it.
3. Let me know if you need a wiki link added.
4. Upload pics to PicasaWeb and send me the album link.
5. Register if you aren’t registered yet. Registering gets you wiki links and access to our People Search feature.
6. Update your profile and change your address.

-Ben

“For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain.” - Philippians 1:21

Our theme for Fall 2007 is “To Live is Christ.” It really is no different from the direction we’ve started to head in last semester, when our theme was “Made to Worship.” It arises from the same Biblical conviction that the glory of God is the singular, ultimate, defining reason we exist, and our joy in God is the singular, ultimate, definition reason we exist (See Our Beliefs for clarification). We aim this semester to dig deeper into the Word of God to learn more about who Jesus truly is, while praying for the power of the Holy Spirit to sanctify us by the Truth (John 17:17), to help us sow accurate teaching about Christ into a reality of a life lived for Christ.

“To live is Christ” is not a Christian catchphrase. It is not simply saying, “you need to have Christ be a real part of your life”. It’s not just only saying, “a relationship with Christ should be the most important thing in your life”. It is much, much more. Paul puts it this way:

“But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ” - Philippians 3:7-8

Aiming to follow the example of Paul, we want to dive into what it means to count everything loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ, both individually, and as a fellowship of believers.

There are many blessings of being a part of a Christian fellowship, and we are thankful for them. We do affirm the friendships and memories and fun times, but those are not ultimate. Jesus Christ is. It is our longing to become the kind of believers where it would be clear to each other and to the world that Jesus is our greatest treasure. We care about the praise and sharing and teaching and FFAT, that in all that we do, it would be clear that the best good of Real Life would be undeniably Jesus Christ. Our small groups aim to be smaller communities full of grace and truth, Bible-saturated, in such a way so that it would be clear that the best good of small group is Jesus Christ. We serve together through practical acts of mercy and sharing the gospel in such a way that makes Jesus Christ look great. We pray together, and encourage one another daily, with the Word of God, in love, with the aim of spurring one another closer to Jesus Christ. We aim to become a family of believers where it would be clear and unmistakable that Christ is our treasure, our foundation, our hope and our joy - that He is the ultimate reason we meet together - that His glory and renown satisfying us beyond all satisfaction this world to offer is why we exist.

Join us as we dive into God’s Word and ask Him to teach and transform us so that we might know, in a real, daily sense what it means that “To live is Christ.”

Remember that drawing game we played towards the end of Spring Break? Here’s the scans (finally)…

Here’s how it works….

1. Write a sentence; pass to your right
2. Draw the sentence; fold the sentence under; pass to your right
3. Describe the picture; fold the picture under; pass to your right
4. Repeat 2 and 3

Recipe Here: http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dhgt9k4f_32fhvr97

Seniors - your gifts included a data CD with this is .mp4 format, as well as a folder full of source pictures (including many more than were actually in the slideshow). If you have any questions about it (can’t get it to play, etc.), talk to Ben…

Until this school semester at Cornell University, I have never acknowledged that I was not truly living my life for God. Instead, I was living for the expectations I set upon myself to achieve the career, salary, and future life that I assumed to be an automatic given for any graduate from an Ivy League University. Broken by my weakness and the guilt from my sins, I realized that God would not be pleased by any offering I made because I was not seeking Him first. In studying Romans with the small group that I lead in Campus Crusade for Christ, I have been learning what it means to be set free from sin, to not be condemned by guilt, and to love Him. I no longer desire to be satisfied by anything in this world except His will for my life and my desire to give Him my everything has been a process of freeing me from the burdens that I once carried. Not only this, but God has also filled my heart with His joy so that I cannot help but want to share with others the ways He has opened my eyes. For this reason, I pray for myself Paul’s prayer in Philemon 6: “I pray that you may be active in sharing your faith, so that you will have a full understanding of every good thing we have in Christ.”

This summer, I will be going on a six-week trip from June 25^th to August 6^th through OMF (Overseas Missionary Fellowship) to serve in NE China at Yanbian University of Science & Technology (YUST). As a short-term volunteer, I will be reaching out to students through teaching English and assisting the long-term workers with a partnership team of five other members from the local church I attend in Ithaca.

During the time before and during the trip, I would appreciate prayer support in these areas:

• That I would not rely on my own strength but on God’s provision (for my spiritual, emotional, physical, and financial needs)
• That my heart would learn to care for the people that I will be serving
• That I would draw close to God and seek Him daily
• For God to unify our team and to challenge us to grow in faith

-Jeanne Lee

This summer, from mid-July to mid-August, I’ll be going to Northeast China to teach English at a university for a month.  Hopefully through my interactions with my students and the people in the town, I will be able to share the word of God with them or help the newer Christians develop their faith more.  The team I’m going with is composed of 7 other people from all over the U.S, none of whom know each other already.  We’re going to a pretty rural place, and apparently there’s a church already there, but the students at the university don’t really go because they speak a different dialect and there’s a lot of cultural barriers between ethnic groups.  There is a couple that has been there for about 6 years now, who both teach English at the university.  We’ll be working very closely with them in trying to build a Christian presence on campus.  So yeah, I guess now you know basically everything I know about my trip.  Please pray for me whenever you get the chance, because this trip is going to challenge me a lot!  Seriously though…

Pray that…

• I would desire to glorify God above everything else.  If this happens, everything else will fall into place.
• The language barrier would not be too much of an issue.  I cannot say a single word of Mandarin, so pray that I have the motivation to try to communicate with people anyways and not just give up.
• I get along well with my teammates, and not judge them or rank myself against them.
• God would prepare the hearts of the people I’m going to talk to, because no matter how hard I try, it is not in my power to “convert” people.
• I will eagerly and joyfully seek out ways in which I can serve my team, the long term missionaries, and the people of China and put their needs before my own desires.

-Kellie Kress

RSS Feeds provide an easy way to get new content from a website. Many websites have them - news sites like cnn.com, blogs (like those hosted by Xanga, Livejournal, Wordpress, etc.), and even this site - cornellcru.com.  They’re often represented by this symbol: .

What is RSS?

RSS stands for “Really Simple Syndication”. It lets you subscribe to a website with a type of program that will let you know when there is new content available on the website. This program is called an RSS Aggregator (or Reader) - it pulls together new content from multiple different sources. You can access the content directly in the reader, so you don’t even have to go to the website.

What programs do I use?

You use an Aggregator program. Some popular programs, by platform:

• Windows - RSSOwl, SharpReader, Internet Explorer 7 (built in), or Firefox (via Livebookmarks)
• Mac - NetNewsWire Lite, NewsFire, or Firefox (via Livebookmarks)
• Web-based - Google Reader or Bloglines

What can I subscribe to?

CornellCru.com provides many RSS feeds for you to subscribe to. Once you have an Aggregator set up, click one of the links below to subscribe to the appropriate feed, or copy the link’s location and paste into the Aggregator.

• Cru Blog
• Cru Listserv
• Announcements
• Recent Changes