I Know Why the Renfield Quit Cru

I knew this day would come for 13 years.

Like many American Christians, I had some affiliation with Campus Crusade for Christ back in my college days. Like relatively few Christians, I understood the significance of CCC rebranding itself as “Cru”:

They were ashamed of the Cross.

It was one of those “seeker-sensitive” ideas, you see. The way to increase recruitment is to distance yourself from Christ so people won’t be on their guard when you talk to them about Christ. Or something like that. Hmm, it’s not normally Jesus who goes around deceiving people…

Let me dig out my shocked face as 13 years later, Cru officially jumps the cis-shark. You know the context of that phrase on “Happy Days”, right? It was when the producers ran out of show ideas, so they did the “jump the shark” episode. Then the show flatlined. I hear GenZ has “nuking the fridge” instead.

In Cru’s case, the Renfield who let in the fudgepackers suddenly resigned “for no reason at all” just before his subordinates terminated a Christian couple’s employment in his Christian organization for the crime of Christianity. He quit because he saw what’s coming! The smart Renfield, at least. The other one is female.

Campus Crusade adopts new name - 'Cru' - Baptist Press

h ttps://www.baptistpress.com/resource-library/news/campus-crusade-adopts-new-name-cru/

By Whitney Jones, 20 July 2011

FORT COLLINS, Colo. (RNS) — Campus Crusade for Christ is out. “Cru” is in.

The 60-year-old evangelical ministry announced its new name at a staff conference in Fort Collins, Colo., on July 19, saying the old name had become problematic.

“We’ve been having issues with two words in the name — campus and crusade,” said Steve Sellers, a vice president who oversees the ministry’s U.S. operations, in an interview.

Then they ditched all three words. Hmm.

Though the Orlando, Fla.-based organization began on campuses in 1951, it has expanded to more than two dozen ministries focused on topics such as families, athletes, the military and inner cities.

That’s not a reason to drop the word “campus”, if you’re doing other stuff in addition to campus stuff. Spinoffs are the go-to solution for when a ministry outgrows its original purpose. Why didn’t they? Nobody said, but the go-to answer is “because the original ministry brings in the money”. Tapping college kids to provide fundraising and volunteer labor for the other social works, is the Ockham’s Razor to why they didn’t split up.

When Campus Crusade was founded by the late Bill Bright and his wife Vonette, the word “crusade” typically referred to the large, stadium events held by evangelists like Billy Graham.

“In today’s culture it carries more weight in terms of its historic meaning,” Sellers said, with people thinking “more to the days of the Crusaders and dealing with the Middle East as opposed to a positive use of the word.”

Cru isn’t the only religious organization that has moved away from “crusade.” Wheaton College, Graham’s alma mater in Illinois, changed its mascot from Crusaders to Thunder in 2000. Graham’s son Franklin leads “festivals” instead of crusades, and his grandson Will holds “celebrations.”

Most recently, Crusader Lutheran Church in Rockville, Md., changed its name to Living Faith Lutheran Church out of concern that the old name had “militaristic” and “non-Christian” overtones.

The Satanists were upset at the idea that your church was actively opposed to them? And you thought that was a bad thing? What were you thinking?

“We don’t want the words that we use to get in the way of the message that we have,” [Sellers] said.

Oh.

In a Frequently Asked Questions feature on its website, the ministry explained why leaders also opted to take the word “Christ” out of its title.

YES! THEY ASKED THE QUESTION!

“Cru enables us to have discussions about Christ with people who might initially be turned off by a more overtly Christian name,” the response read. “We believe that our interaction and our communication with the world will be what ultimately honors and glorifies Christ.”

That was, as expected, open blasphemy against Christ. That was Renfield opening the window and assuring Dracula that he would not be forced to endure a single whiff of garlic.

During the extensive renaming process, Sellers said researchers found that 9 percent of Christians, and 20 percent of non-Christians, were turned off by the original name.

Well… bye.

A total of 1,600 alternatives were considered.

They rejected my suggestion of “Campus Commie Cucks”! Dangit, I built that time machine for nothing!

The name Cru — already used on many U.S. college campuses — will be used throughout the United States. Most of the international ministries affiliated with Cru use a name other than Campus Crusade for Christ. Its Canadian affiliate is called Power to Change and European ministries use the name Agape.

“We want to remove any obstacle to people hearing about the most important person who ever lived — Jesus Christ,” [said Vonette Bright in a statement.]

You. Removed. Jesus. To talk about Jesus. Whose side were you really on?

Taking sides

h ttps://wng.org/articles/taking-sides-1708229211

By Mary Jackson, 22 February 2024, Issue 9 March 2024

LATE LAST YEAR, Uriah Mundell sat outside a noisy coffee shop, across from his boss, and agonized over a wrenching prospect: His decadeslong tenure with one of the nation’s leading evangelical ministries might be coming to a premature end.

Months earlier, Uriah had completed a new sexuality training program mandated by his employer, Cru.

Oh, dayumn.

He had voiced objections to his boss and other leaders, but still couldn’t shake his concerns. Now, his boss suggested he was quibbling over semantics. He told Uriah if he couldn’t let it go, he might need to look for a new job.

A common lie. “It’s a trivially insignificant matter, so we’ll destroy you if you don’t submit.”

Uriah left the meeting with a heavy feeling of sadness. “It’s been a tense hour and a half,” he texted his wife before heading home in the rain. As he drove, he wondered whether he was the only one concerned that the organization formerly known as Campus Crusade for Christ had drifted from Biblical teachings on sexuality and gender. He soon learned he wasn’t.

The next day, author Rosaria Butterfield stood before roughly 10,000 Liberty University students to give a convocation address. Butterfield is a former lesbian feminist and tenured English professor who is now a pastor’s wife and mother. After sharing her testimony, she called out organizations and leaders she believes are compromising on issues related to sexuality and gender: Revoice; Preston Sprinkle’s Center for Faith, Sexuality & Gender; … and Cru. The audience let out an audible gasp.

Butterfield paused to let her assertion sink in.

Attention, Pastors of Wiemerica: when a woman outperforms you as a preacher & leader of Christ, that’s a DOUBLY BAD thing. In fact, that’s one of the worst insults that God can hang on you. Go read the story of Judge Barak again, and keep rereading it until the dime drops.

She insisted subtle lies have crept into the Church and other Christian institutions—lies that “discourage repentance and encourage the pride of victimhood.” Among what she labels false teaching: Same-sex attraction is a sinless temptation unless you act on it; it’s acceptable for Christians to call themselves gay as long as they are celibate; people with same-sex attraction rarely, if ever, change; and sex and gender are different, so God doesn’t mind if men live as women and vice versa.

Despite the immediate furor, Cru has not responded to Butterfield’s ­allegations, even as it has taken steps behind the scenes to clarify its position and tweak its training materials in response. Far from being mollified, Butterfield argues those changes mask a deeper theological problem that remains unaddressed.

Correct. The problem here is not training materials being left in place. The problem here is wicked leaders being left in place. The solution is CRUSADES FOR CHRIST!!!

Ahem.

Cru’s attempt to fix its messaging sheds light on the ways evangelical ministries and leaders are being challenged to clarify their positions on myriad hot-button issues surrounding sexuality and gender. On one side are those who believe Christians can embrace some, if not all, cultural sexual norms. On the other: those who believe the Bible leaves no wiggle room when it comes to creation’s male-female dichotomy, that same-sex attraction has its roots in the sinful flesh, and that through repentance, all sexual brokenness can be overcome in the Savior.

Sooner or later, every church and parachurch organization will have to pick a side. But the tug-of-war has already threatened to tear some of them apart.

There is no unity between Christ and Satan.

WHILE THE AUDIENCE at Liberty University sounded shocked to hear Cru linked with organizations that veer even slightly from Biblical orthodoxy, the debate over how to address issues of sexuality and gender has been running behind the scenes for several years.

Uriah Mundell and his wife Marissa, who are both 42, have served in various roles at Cru for the last 23 years. The couple’s relationship began during Cru events in college. Uriah proposed during a Cru mission trip in East Asia. The couple continued as missionaries with Cru in multiple foreign countries, and they adopted two of their five children from regions where they served. But as they watched the organization attempt to respond to the culture’s increasingly un-Biblical ideas about sexuality and gender, the Mundells felt caught in a widening rift.

They learned about Butterfield’s comments from another staff member. The next day, after Marissa returned home from picking the kids up from school, the couple knelt beside their bed and propped her phone up against a pile of laundry. With the bedroom door closed, they listened to Butterfield’s address.

Until that moment, Uriah, who works with a small team in Austin, Texas, had wondered if his and Marissa’s concerns were overblown. Cru leaders had certainly downplayed them. When he told his supervisor he couldn’t support “pronoun hospitality”—using a person’s preferred pronouns as a presumed expression of Christian ­compassion—the supervisor said Uriah wasn’t being winsome.

For Marissa, who is also on staff at Cru, Butterfield’s remarks brought ­sadness and relief. Sadness because the statements came as no surprise. Relief because Butterfield’s theological ­objections mirrored her own.

When the video ended, Marissa turned to her husband, her mind filled with alarm at the potential fallout. The Mundells care deeply about Cru. Plus, they rely entirely on donor support. This was their livelihood. But Marissa knew the couple’s commitment to Scriptural fidelity trumped all else.

“Well,” she said, “here we go.”

I’ve been there, too. The Bible says one thing about human sexuality. The entire organized Church says the exact opposite. The Bible can’t be wrong, and surely not every single Church leader can independently be wrong in the exact same direction. So… which is it?

It’s the latter. This Great Apostasy is organized on such a colossal scale, that its perpetrators act in concert without ever meeting each other. I am proud that I stayed loyal to Scripture, and less proud that I lacked moral conviction to uphold it alone.

Well, the COVID Plandemic established my repentance regarding that.

And sometimes, the perpetrators DO meet each other and invite the devil in.

Days after Butterfield’s address, Cru sent an email to its staff linking to its media policy, “spokesperson resources,” and “communication best practices.” It reiterated the message all staffers should share if questioned about the training: The organization holds “a traditional, historical biblical understanding of sexuality and gender.”

Meaning, capital punishment for sodomy? It’s traditional, historical AND Biblical!

But Cru’s leaders didn’t address Butterfield’s accusations directly.

NEARLY 30 PERCENT of Gen Z adults, those between 18 and 25, now say they are LGBTQ, according to a new survey by the Public Religion Research Institute…

This surge among young adults presents a unique challenge for organizations like Cru.

No… no, I am thinking that organizations like Cru are the perpetrators.

Bill Bright founded the organization in 1951 at the University of California, Los Angeles, with the intent to evangelize college students. Cru maintains campus ministries in 2,300 locations and reaches 101,000 students and faculty nationwide. It has grown into an $811 million international ministry with a variety of initiatives, including the Jesus Film Project…

Arguably an effective tool for evangelism, although I never saw much in the way of follow-up.

Athletes in Action…

I went to one of those rallies. Famous athletes didn’t inspire me specifically, but they do inspire many young boys. Any doubts I had about that, were crushed beneath the O.J. Simpson Trial. You kids today have no idea... suffice to say, that March 2020 was the second time in my life that I’ve seen a life-ending media circus feeding frenzy. I still twitch at the phrase “white Ford Bronco”.

FamilyLife, and Cru Military.

Dunno.

But in recent years, the organization has weathered claims it’s departing from its original mission. In 2021, Cru closed its race ministry, the Lenses Institute, after a staff report revealed growing internal concern over the promotion of critical race theory.

Around the same time, Cru started developing its new sexuality training, called Compassionate and Faithful. In a July 12 email to Uriah Mundell, Keith Johnson explained why: “The majority of our staff do not feel equipped to navigate LGBT+ challenges.”

So, they brought in an outside sexpert known for being upset at the concept of Hell.

He listed bullet points with other reasons for the training. They included: “The LGBT+ community is expanding in all corners of society, directly or indirectly, touching all of our ministries,” and, “We have co-workers who experience same-sex attraction or gender dysphoria and we want to make Cru a safe environment for them to live out their missionary calling.”

Cru insists it wants to meet those challenges while remaining faithful to the Bible.

That’s not possible, so they lied, so we know which side they took.

The Compassionate and Faithful guidelines state: “As followers of Christ, we want to navigate LGBT+ questions in a way that is compassionate toward people (our posture) and faithful to Scripture (our position).” The guidelines, which I reviewed, say the training addresses questions such as, “What does it mean to follow Christ faithfully if I experience same-sex attraction or gender dysphoria?”

It means you have a serious sin issue and need to live a lifetime of repentance against it. Just like everybody else, but yours will kill you quicker if you don’t control it.

Also, it means you were probably molested as a child. A day is coming, when the Church will help bring that evildoer to the justice gibbet.

…and, “Is it possible to warmly invite people in the LGBT+ community to consider Christ, while remaining faithful to the teaching of Scripture on sexuality?”

Invite them to consider repentance? Of course. To be granted access to the Church? No and why would you do that.

The training’s seven modules lean heavily on stories. In one, an anonymous Cru intern described breaking off a same-sex relationship as she took her obedience to God more seriously. The intern emphasized the need to create “a space of vulnerability and humility.”

Get rid of women in the Church. Keep them safe at home. The devil is playing the Adam’s Rib vulnerability like a one-note kazoo!

“Equating same-sex attraction to sin and speaking judgmentally against those in the LGBT+ community doesn’t prove conducive to sharing the gospel with non-believers, especially those who are in same-sex relationships,” she said.

Similar sentiments reverberate through the portions of Cru’s training I reviewed. It includes 13 videos from Preston Sprinkle, one of the leaders Butterfield singled out in her address. Sprinkle has written several books on LGBTQ issues…

Including “there’s no Hell for unbelievers”..

“…hosts a podcast called Theology in the Raw, and runs the Center for Faith, Sexuality & Gender. The videos in Cru’s training are part of the center’s Digital Leaders Forum series. During a Nov. 27 episode of his podcast, Sprinkle said numerous Christian groups, including InterVarsity and Liberty University, use his videos. InterVarsity confirmed Sprinkle’s claim, but Liberty did not respond to my request for comment.

He’s a vampire being introduced by Renfields. The seminary model. No matter how well you’re taught at church, when your pastor wanders off, the only suitable replacement is yet another pastor from Moscow. The John Dewey system of replacing Bible studies with loyalty sessions. I always thought that the clergy were simply too insecure to tolerate the existence of a peer, but now I recognize the wicked works of Henrietta Mears.

The Mundells and other former staff members I spoke with questioned Cru’s heavy reliance on Sprinkle to instruct its staff on the sensitive topics surrounding same-sex attraction and gender confusion.

SPRINKLE HAS GAINED widespread popularity, but also critics, for the way he addresses LGBTQ issues in the Church—oftentimes chiding Christians. He is part of a burgeoning subset within evangelicalism called Side B.

Loosely defined, Side B adherents hold to the historic, Biblical ethic of sexual activity as reserved for one man and one woman within the bounds of marriage. But they support professing Christians using LGBTQ labels such as “gay Christian.” Many, including Sprinkle, advocate for “pronoun hospitality.” Some within Side B support taking vows of celibacy or allowing same-sex attracted Christians to live together, in some cases having romantic relationships without sex, in what sometimes is called a “celibate partnership.” Individuals who say they are same-sex attracted but marry the opposite sex refer to their union as a “mixed-orientation marriage.”

In one Q&A session from his Digital Leaders Forum videos, Sprinkle said he thinks someone can still be a Christian even if he or she holds to an affirming view of same-sex marriage. “I would say being same-sex attracted, while being a part of one’s fallen nature, is not a morally culpable sin that one needs to repent for,” he added during the Nov. 27 podcast.

After Butterfield’s comments at Liberty, Sprinkle disputed her claims, arguing she’d misrepresented his position. He said he attempted to have a private conversation with her but was rebuffed by her husband, Kent Butterfield, and other church leaders.

Good work, Kent. You dodged a bullet. No other man gets private access to your wife, EVER! Least of all, a pillow-biting ripoff of Dracula.

They noted, “There is a difference in understanding of the gospel and therefore … no basis for discussion.”

Side B emerged in the early 2010s as an alternative to Side A, those who argue the Bible supports monogamous same-sex marriage. Sprinkle and his center, along with the Revoice conference, have helped proliferate Side B, especially in nondenominational churches. Cru’s training points its staff to books and papers by Sprinkle and other Side B advocates, including eight pastoral papers from Sprinkle’s center.

That sounds exactly like the Hegelian Dialectic. In fact, that’s where this post will end up. We’ll also see about Preston Sprinkle, if that’s his real name. In the context of the Rainbow Mafia, I have doubts.

Cru President Steve Sellers to Step Down

h ttps://ministrywatch.com/cru-president-steve-sellers-to-step-down/

By Steve Rabey, 17 January 2024

I didn’t learn much about Sellers’ history, except he’s worked in Cru since 1976 and married his wife when she was his subordinate while in New England. He’s also proud to continue in the traditions of Bill Bright & Company, which is bad because Freemasons. Then I found his parachute deploying.

Cru, the $811 million international ministry formerly known as Campus Crusade for Christ International, announced Monday that president Steve Sellers will step down in July. Sellers explained the move in a video posted Monday night, saying that God had led him to his post and is now leading him to leave it.

“Some people might wonder, ‘Well, what’s the real story?’” he said in the video made with his wife Christy. “Is there another issue, another agenda?”

“I can tell you simply that the only issue is that prayer of surrender, that we want to do whatever it is that God has for us to do. There’s no sickness, there’s nothing that’s going on. There’s no challenge that we’re facing, no other issue that’s out there that’s causing us to make this decision.”

His four years as President have seen everything from the Plandemic to Zion Ascendant, but there’s no current challenge needing his leadership? Almighty God came to him in a dream and told him to retire “for no reason at all”, and who are we to doubt “God”?

We are the saints of the True and Living God, Mothercucker Seller, that’s who. If ever you were loyal to God, despite erasing His name from yours in order to comfort the devil, that conversation you claim to have had with Him, would have included a reason for your removal. Probably the obvious reason.

In November, a speaker at Liberty University’s convocation accused Cru and other ministries of promoting “lies” about sexuality. Dr. Rosaria Butterfield, the author of the 2023 book, Five Lies of Our Anti-Christian Age, accused Cru and other ministries of helping these lies invade the church, including the normalizing of homosexuality and transgenderism, and the promotion of feminism.

I don’t normally buy theology books written by women, let alone pastor-wives… *checks*. Meh. Just read my blog.

“We don’t throw people away, but without repentance, we don’t trust them,” she said of the ministries. When asked specifically about Cru, she said, “I got the receipts, people.”

OUCH!

In 2021, Joe Ludwikowski, executive director of Cru’s military ministry resigned after seven years of objecting to philosophical changes in the ministry, including “the emergence of Critical Race theory as a guiding philosophy within Cru” and “a departure from our original mission and vision.”

And BURN! You say you don’t face any challenge, Quitter Seller? To the contrary, this calls for some Glenn Frey… you quit because The Heat Is On!

The shadows high
On the darker side
Behind those doors
It's a wilder ride

You can make or break
You can win or lose
That's a chance you take
And the heat's on you

And the heat is on!

Preston Sprinkle… that appears to be his real name after all, not a porn name, despite his being more queer than a three-dollar bill named xir/xhey. In addition to his abovementioned rawdog podcast and “Center for Faith and Sausage Studies”, he also hosts a conference “Exiles In Babylon”. First held in 2022 in Boise, Idaho, a people so unrelentingly not-like-Babylon, that that Marxists escaping Seattle turned back in homesickness. Exactly like Lot’s wife, come to think of it, except I hear they turned into sacks of shit.

He’s not even trying to hide it in the broad daylight.

Somebody at Cru, besides Seller, is a Renfield letting him in. I found her.

Cru director with same-sex attraction explains how Christians should love transgender people

[url lost, think it was Christian Post]

A Christian who struggles with same-sex attraction has offered advice on how Christians should love their transgender neighbors.

Rachel Gilson, director of theological development at Cru Northeast, penned a column published on Desiring God about how Christians should consider transgenderism “not primarily as topics to be discussed, but as issues affecting real people, human beings made by God.”

“Many transgender people (though not all) are extremely vulnerable to homelessness, suicide, and abuse ranging from verbal insults all the way to murder,” wrote Gilson. “And even if they were not vulnerable in these ways, as image-bearers of our God, they deserve for us to treat them with dignity, respect, and love. If we have any battle to fight, it’s with spiritual forces of evil, not flesh and blood (Ephesians 6:12).”

If you rape children then you die. If you use a Bible to excuse that behavior from justice, then you die twice. Vox Dei. And just to be Spergy, I point out that man being made in God’s image is why God imposed the death penalty in the first place. Genesis 9:6.

The idea that Christianity is only meant to be practiced in a box with no effect upon your neighbor, is completely and insultingly unjustifiable.

Sourced from www.barnhardt.biz/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/img_2735-1.jpg

Gilson is also affiliated with the Gospel Coalition, and with Sprinkles on top:

h ttps://www.rachelgilson.com/blog-index/podcast-theology-in-the-raw-with-preston-sprinkle

I love everything Dr. Preston Sprinkle puts out in the world through his Center for Faith, Sexuality and Gender, and I was pumped to be on his great podcast [#780]!

SBC Books Woke Side B Theologian Rachel Gilson For Women’s Conference

h ttps://evangelicaldarkweb.org/2023/05/19/sbc-books-woke-side-b-theologian-rachel-gilson-for-womens-conference/

The Annual Southern Baptist Convention of 2023 is already shaping up to be a showdown over women pastors, but the Pastor’s Wives/Women’s Conference has raised the question of whether the SBC tolerates Side B theology. Side B theology teaches that homosexual attractions are not sin in and of themselves, which is an unbiblical teaching on the nature of sin. This, therefore, creates further unbiblical teachings on repentance and sanctification. Jared Moore raised awareness that the SBC booked Rachel Gilson for this conference.

I fear to ask… yet I must…

h ttps://msmagazine.com/2023/07/06/southern-baptists-women-pastor/

Southern Baptists are at it again, targeting women pastors in the next round of an ongoing battle over ordination and leadership in the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC).

Yes!

Never mind that more and more people are leaving churches and identifying as religious “nones.” Never mind that among young people, this mostly has to do with the church’s exclusionary beliefs and practices. Never mind that there is a clergy sex abuse scandal among Southern Baptists.

The possibility of women’s leadership is such a threat, it has to be eradicated. So rather than dealing decisively with its clergy abuse scandal, the SBC’s annual meeting last month chose to spend its time pummeling women pastors and once again delaying necessary abuse reforms.

YES!!!

During the meeting, “messengers”—Southern Baptist language for “delegates”—reaffirmed the expulsion of two churches that have women serving as pastors. They also took the first steps in amending the denomination’s constitution to ensure any member congregation “does not affirm, appoint or employ a woman as a pastor of any kind.”

I am not surprised. The SBC has been trying to limit women since their founding when they prevented women from being messengers and required a man to give the report of the women’s missionary organization during the SBC meeting.

yesyesyes

The timing of the current actions is also suspect, since Southern Baptists are facing an epic clergy abuse scandal that they seem to want to do little about. Suddenly turning the denomination’s attention back to women as pastors nearly 40 years after the SBC approved a resolution saying only men should serve as senior pastors seems a convenient smokescreen for avoiding the problem of sexual misconduct in their midst.

You know what would end sexual harassment and abuse of women in Baptist churches forever?

If they get rid of all the women. Put then in some child-care Auxiliary, or something, to study men the way men study God. Like God said to.

Because letting them participate, is how all those harassments started happening.

I was ordained by a Southern Baptist congregation in 1993, then left the SBC in 1996 after it amended its constitution to exclude churches that affirmed queer folks.

Well… bye.

So, we mostly end up with the usual takeaways: no female leadership, no confusion over mission, intolerance of word salads and above all, the importance of “if you don’t want Christ then we Christians don’t want you”.

One notices that all of these entryists use the exact same rhetorical attack of “we affirm what God said, BUT we must not reject the devout Christian who insistently identifies as an evil-lover not an evil-doer.” Which is the Hegelian synthesis of “what God said” and “what Satan demands”. Or as Rachel put it, side A versus side B. Look, if you’re repentant about your abnormal sexuality then you won’t demand that other people violate their consciences to accept you, no matter their doubts about why you’re so butthurt all the time.

Repentance never involves making demands of OTHER people. The 180 exact opposite, in fact. Repentance is you realizing when the problem is YOU, and hating the evil you do enough to oppose it.

“Accommodate my deviancy!”, now that’s just grounds for a… CRUSADE FOR CHRIST.