CCC Turns Spring Break into ''Big Break'' for Students to Meet Jesus
350,000 college students will descend on Panama City for Spring Break, and 3,000-5,000 CCC students will be there alongside, evangelizing them.
As colleges around the nation let students out for one week and as students descend on the tropical resorts, Campus Crusade for Christ (CCC) presents students with an alternative spring break at one of those very same resorts. 350,000 college students will descend on Panama City for Spring Break, and 3,000-5,000 CCC students will be there alongside, evangelizing them.
"Big Break has a combination flavor/purpose. It provides student believers a place to go where they can be with other believers, where they can be stimulated in their faith, and grow - and where they receive a bit of training" said Tony Arnold, the national press contact for the campus ministry part of CCC's vast network of ministries.
But "it is also an outreach event. Every morning, there's praise/worship, a Bible speaker, and training. Training is focused on practically sharing their faith in the context of a beach resort where they are inundated with hundreds of thousands of college students."
"Your average student is down there for sun, sand, suds, surf, and sex," said Tony Arnold. At the Big Break, "our students are down there to serve the Savior."
"It's about that time of year when college students everywhere wake up from the coma their calculus books put them under and remember that they have an entire week away from the dull repetition of classroom sitting and test taking. But what should one do with all this freedom? There seems to be endless options available," stated a woman on the CCC's Big Break clip.
Students will gather in Panama City, Florida for one of three weeklong conferences to "grow in faith," "talk to God," and share the Gospel with others at that Spring Break hotspot.
College students will worship God to some contemporary Christian music, hear talks from speakers, spend some personal time with God, hang out with friends and make new ones, and receive evangelism training.
The effort is on training the students on "having a conversation with someone that will point him or her to the gospel."
"A principle of CCC is we don't wait for students to go to us, but we go to them. We go to the sororities, fraternities, athletic teams, student government, etc. - wherever they are. When students are not in school, we go where they are - meaning if it's Spring Break and they're at the beach, we go to the beach," says Arnold.
"Sometimes in that very different environment, God uses that to reach students. In the midst of a dark place, their own sense of loneliness and isolation is magnified," said Arnold, "and they are sometimes more open than if they were back home on campus. It's at that point that we want to be there to tell them the good news, that there's hope in Jesus."
On four by six cards with five statements, CCC students go up to other students and ask them to fill out the survey for them. These Quest Surveys double as an evangelism technique.
On these cards, a statement might be "the most important thing in life is…" or "so far in my spiritual journey, I've tried…" and asking other students to fill in the rest will enable them to break the ice, and transition them into a conversation of faith. "Our students are trained to transition that kind of conversation to their own testimony," said Arnold.
"We've just seen so many people coming to Him. Conversations start really easily with surveys. We're trained with how to do evangelism," stated the media clip, introducing Big Break to students.
The CCC staffer on the clip stated, "The students are here to party and drink, and those things are great for the first couple of days, but then it hits Wednesday and Thursday, and these people are just dying from it. That's where we come in. We say, yeah what you've put your hope in is gone now, but here's Christ."
