The Main Session Speakers

Tim Henderson

The first message was given by a Cru staff member named Tim Henderson, here was his main idea over the three messages he gave:
The good news of the Gospel is that Jesus became king after his redemptive work on the cross/resurrection. He has NOT always been king, with humans initially having dominion over the earth after creation who, as a result of the fall, lost it to Satan’s hands. After the cross, this dominion was taken away from Satan and given to Jesus until the final judgment where Jesus will offer the authority back to God for the remainder of eternity. If Jesus can give up all authority to God, then we should follow suit and give over to God areas of our life where we have authority.
I don’t have a ton of interest in breaking down every single point of his message to disprove it but therein lies the problem. The time required to honestly break down and examine what he was saying in the light of the scriptures would be far too high for not only myself but also for the majority of the students attending the conference. The prerequisite topics that would need to be understood thoroughly to get to the issue of Jesus’ kingship include the incarnation, the relationship between the members of the Trinity, as well as an understanding of the various theories of the atonement. These topics are vast and could not be understood with the time restraints put on by a three-day series.
This is not to say that college students should not care about these issues, quite the opposite. Students should understand the fundamental doctrines of the faith, but a platform such as Winter Conference is not the setting for such deeply complicated topics. Sunday school, Seminary, or even discussions with their pastors would be much more appropriate places for such issues as questions can be brought up before the learner becomes confused. In a conference setting, I know that in places I personally got lost and I think it is a safe assumption that others did as well.  Something tells me that Tim (or at least someone in Cru leadership) understood this and arranged for a way that the audience could submit questions online during the message. This, however, falls woefully short to address the needs of the crowd as so many questions were either not answered fully or were never addressed in the first place.
Messages presented in a college ministry context should not shy away from hard topics rather, they need to present the complexity in a way that curious students can use it as a springboard for continued study while still allowing those who are not interested to retain valuable information. The goal should not be to overwhelm with information to convince the audience member of the speaker’s point. Even more, as college students, we are still developing and need direction in our lives more so than people in their 50s and an effective message should be able to be applied to our lives.
Tim used the vast majority of his time setting the groundwork for the brief 10 minutes of application the last day. He wanted to inform our minds on a niche topic, not give us advise us in our walk with God.

Keri Armentrout

Keri is the speaker that I have the fewest opinions on as I only heard her speak once. She had a strong focus on evangelism, being a missionary herself, which was extremely practical. Considering that she first spoke before the day of outreach, it makes complete sense, and I am under the impression that it was helpful to those who went evangelizing that day. The honor/shame dichotomy presented in the pamphlet that was handed out as a resource for speaking with unbelievers is what caught the majority of my attention, and I still don’t know how to feel about it. Regardless, Keri emphasized an essential idea in the theology of evangelism: God does the work, but we should still be prepared to present the gospel faithfully.

Dr.Ken Fentress
Ken was easily my favorite speaker at the conference. In continuing the theme of evangelism, Ken went back to Genesis 3 and 4 to present the theology behind spreading the gospel. Being a pastor, Ken essentially preached in a way that, in my opinion, was much more focused and appropriate for a youth conference. He spoke not on his own authority but made sure to support all that he said in the scriptures. In the future, Cru would do well to bring along pastors with a seminary background like Ken to speak at conferences. Not everyone I know liked him, however, to some he may have been a bit too focused, and in comparison to Keri, he was much less practical.

“Worship” Music

 The music at the conference was significantly different than what I had experienced the year prior. While the band in 2017 had original songs that they played, they still put the usual worship songs that most students would be familiar with in their rotation. This led to an experience where you would be exposed to new songs while also hearing your favorites sprinkled in between. This year, however, the vast majority of the songs that the band played were their original songs… They were not great.
I am someone who generally struggles to enjoy contemporary worship music, but I will admit that there are certain songs that I truly do enjoy to hear and sing. The band played the conference like it was their concert, referring to the crowd as “Baltimore”  and playing maybe 3-5 nonoriginal songs in total (with some not even being worship songs). Let me be frank, I did not go to Winter conference to see a mediocre worship band. I came to worship God through song, and that goal is hindered when meaningless lyrics such as “my daddy is a king yeah” and “feeling your energy” are played. I try very hard to give contemporary Christian worship music a chance, but in bringing this band to the winter conference, my musical worship experience was significantly diminished and was reduced to laughing at the words on the screen.

Main Session non-message shenanigans

The Emcee

To preface the emcee of the conference, Shelby Abbot, is very good; there’s a reason why he keeps getting invited back to the conference. He can hold an audience well with his self deprecating humor, and he knows all the too accurate college Christian stereotypes that describe me and make me smile.
There is one event that he puts on that I don’t feel great about and that is “Shelby’s sweet seats.” Basically, when you sign in to the conference, you put your name into a big tub, and during main sessions, Shelby will pick out one random guy and one random girl to come up and sit together on a couch for the rest of the time. It is implied, although it hides behind the mask of humor, that this is some way of setting people up. In theory, it sounds fun, but in practice, I believe it is a negative experience for those directly involved.
I am confident that if I were called up this year, I would’ve had fun with it and done my best to play it off. However, I know that last year I would not have had such a positive experience. I was not nearly as confident in myself, and I’m sure that I’d be dealing with self-hatred about how I acted going up to the stage.
People our age are awkward and struggle to find the balance between the incredibly serious push by the church for young Christians to get married as soon as possible and the push by the society to throw off the chains of marriage for the casual hookup culture. Bringing a young man up there only to make jokes about how awkward they are when they don’t know how to act is not right. What is gained by those called up? Do they grow at all from the experience? No–the crowd laughs at them for the cringe-inducing situation they are put in and forgets about them soon after the camera is switched off. Am I overthinking this? Maybe. But instead of asking why we shouldn’t do activities like Shelby’s sweet seats I think we should start asking if there is a reason beyond laughs to do them in the first place.
P.S. It could be said that people could opt out of putting their name in the tub but that would also take their name out of the running for the various prizes that get offered throughout the conference. An easy fix would be to pick the prize winners from a registration list rather than from the bucket.

Asking for Money

The last things I want to touch on in this section is when they ask the conference to raise money for Cru as an organization. My biggest complaint is that a significant amount of money we have as college students is not ours. As college students who, for the most part, still live with our parents, we still get a lot of money from them–if not directly, then indirectly through aid in our tuition.  If college students spend a large sum of money that they know is not sustainable (which the speaker encouraged), it is not them who will suffer the consequences but their parents. When a student is unable to pay for school, their parents are the next in line to pick up the tab.
I understand and appreciate the need to donate while trusting God with the results but I do not believe that Cru as a parachurch organization has the biblical authority to solicit money from us. During the entire speech, the only option presented by the speaker is to either give a little or give a lot, even using Mark 12 to suggest that we are obligated to donate more than what we are able. This is incredibly forceful, and when churches ask for money, they do so humbly for they know how much responsibility they take on by taking the money of God’s people. There was not a shred of humility in the speaker who presented the request for our money. I believe in what Cru is doing and I understand the importance of college ministry, but there is no biblical precedence for its existence, and as such, it should not have the legitimacy to ask its participants for funding as the church does. I mentioned earlier how they gave away prizes to members of the crowd randomly (not cheap prizes either) but many of them were valued at over $100. Cru buys gifts to give out to random members of the crowd and then guilts the same audience members into giving up their money to fund Cru. What am I supposed to think when this contradiction is presented to me? It screams not only inefficiency in asking for money but perhaps even incompetence in the leadership.

Day of Out Reach/Seminar

Last year, on the day of outreach, the New Jersey schools were sent out to participate in evangelism around the harbor as we were not assigned to any one area or church. It was a dysfunctional and overall negative experience. In comparison, this year was far better with every campus assigned to a local church where we either helped out with the property’s physical needs or, with the church’s support, evangelized and prayed for the surrounding neighborhood. This is much more effective as the local churches know the area far better than college students from various parts of the northeast and in serving them, we help to serve the community more effectively than we would on our own.

There were numerous seminars offered, and I attended the seminar dealing with LGBT issues focusing on homosexuality and how to approach their community. I won’t sugarcoat the fact that I am unable to approach this issue unbiasedly, as it is a difficult topic for me to work through. This is not to say that I must avoid discussions like this (such as race-relations in the church). Instead, I need to engage them carefully, and as such, will not make conclusive evaluations about the claims made in the seminar. Overall, it was a very fair, and honest perspective on the issue. It provided practical tips which were valuable to many that I know. I will say that I am concerned about the use of worldly definitions of gender and sexual orientation as well as a significant amount of talking points ripped from social psychology textbooks that aren’t trying to cohere with a biblical worldview. This is not to discredit the totality of the presentation or its importance but to simply point out some of the rhetoric that caused me concern. Perhaps I focus too much on the underlying presuppositions of a speaker and not the actual content, causing me to shut myself off from different perspectives. I don’t know. I am not perfect but I am trying to be better and, in this area especially, I have a lot to think and pray through.

Conclusion

Winter conference, like all Cru events, will always be a mixed bag for me. From inconsistent music to varying quality of the speakers, I sometimes wonder why I still attend. However, that it where I remember that I am not going to support Cru, I am going to spend time with the people that I love. No matter how how bad of a show Cru puts on I know that I will be able to grow in my faith through the wonderful brothers and sisters God has gifted me in my fellowship.