For me personally, there have been some steps forward in that I’ve been able to see some improvement in my constant headaches. It’s still a moment my moment problem for me and that probably won’t change, but it makes me increasingly aware of how God has to be involved in every day and how he determines how I will spend it.

One blessing stemming from this improvement is that I’m able to take over doing some of Keynote’s financial jobs, and have been spending a lot more time in the office getting trained. Some friends are transitioning out of Keynote to open a local branch of FamilyLife (another great part of Cru) here in Indy. The timing has worked well for me to take up where he left off on this part of his job. One of the other moms has taken another big piece of his responsibilities so the gap is being filled.

Another way we’re happy to serve is by opening our home to visitors. With the Superbowl just around the corner, housing is, as you can imagine, a bit scarce. Athletes in Action (yet another part of Cru!) hosts a Superbowl breakfast every year as one of the official events and they have a lot of staff heading to Indy to run this great event. We’ll be able to make things easier by sharing our home with some of them.

The following month, we’ll host another staff member from Orlando coming to attend Keynote’s Comm Lab. No matter how long we have been in ministry, we’ve found that the skills Comm Lab teaches on how to effectively communicate your story and your message are invaluable.

Keynote will host the third annual Comm Lab at the end of March. Keynote loves to serve others and equip them to more confidently proclaim God’s truth. Please pray with us that this would be an effective and helpful event for all who participate. This event is open to anyone who would like to attend, so if you or someone you know would like to take part in this event, you can learn more here.

Thank you all for your involvement in our lives. You make our ministry here in Indy possible through your prayers, your generosity, and your encouragement. We are so blessed by you!

Dorinda Beeley, part of the excellent team at LightSys Technology Services, has written a great article about her journey to missions IT. It’s called “From Skeptic to Recruiter: How a Missions Internship Changed My Life”, and it’s in a publication from Calvin College called Dynamic Link.

As she says, “The longer I’m in Missions IT, the more I see how much of a lever technology can truly be as we spread the name of Christ throughout the world”.  Amen!  That’s why we do what we do!

“I was against planning because it would push the Holy Spirit out of our [Cru] meeting,” said Lauren, a student leader at Butler University determined to honor God in the weekly meeting.

Lauren’s heart was in the right place but she didn’t understand she could honor God by spending time preparing for Cru’s weekly meeting. The door to the Cru meeting is always open to the 5,000 students on campus. It is often the first experience students have with Christianity. Yet each week leading up to the meeting Lauren wondered if she and the other leaders had taken care of their responsibilities.

Campus Crusade staff member Jeff describes the weekly meetings as chaotic and thrown together. “I was at a loss for how to inspire and equip our student leaders with a vision for what an excellent, Christ-centered weekly meeting could look like,” says Jeff.

Keynote was able to support Jeff’s ministry through our Communication Training curriculum. Vicki Guinn of Keynote facilitated a Weekly Meeting Training Workshop to train 15 Butler students including Lauren, Josh and Kevin. This training is specifically designed to develop student leaders and equip them to plan, pray, and prepare well for a weekly event. In the relaxed environment where students could spread out on the floor and think creatively, Lauren had an “aha” moment. She realized the connection between inviting God into the process of planning and a Christ-centered meeting. From both a spiritual and a practical standpoint, these students now feel equipped to lead.

With a sigh of relief Kevin leaned back in his chair and said, “The training pointed us to God first and also helped us plan our next three meetings.” Josh, the emcee, is glad he can join in worship during the final song rather than frantically brainstorming his closing remarks. All three leaders are confident they can set their hearts on glorifying God in the planning process so they and other students can experience God in a real way in the weekly meetings and on campus.

Earlier this month, Keynote hosted an emcee training to prepare the emcees of our Christmas/winter conferences around the country. We hosted the two people who will emcee the Destino Conference, for the Latino branch of the Campus Ministry. It was encouraging to hear them say many of the same things and know that they are trained to do their ministry at this conference.

We brought information about a new tool called MissionHub that is beginning to be used within Campus Crusade for Christ to connect students to local ministries, and to make sure that every interested person is contacted by student leaders.  One of our team led a session on “Using Social Media to Accelerate Your Local Movement”.

Others from around the world brought information about the tools and strategies that they’re using to reach people and build communities online.  It was inspiring to hear about the ways that God’s name is being lifted up through web sites, blogs, apps, film, and video.  We strengthened connections and made new ones.

Please continue to pray that we can make the most of the tools and relationships that God has given us.  If we can figure out how to work together better, we will accelerate the fulfillment of the Great Commission even more!

And please pray for the people of Thailand and our Campus Crusade for Christ staff there.  Since late October, deadly floods have invaded Thailand, forcing Thai CCC staff to postpone ministry activities in order to help displaced people. Though native to Thailand’s heavy rain season, many of these staff members returned to find their own homes damaged, and in some cases, totally destroyed.  If you would like to help them financially, please see help.ministrynetconference.com.

Click here to view the embedded video.

MinistryNet, the international Campus Crusade tech conference that Karl and just under 200 of our staff around the globe are preparing to attend next week, has been a matter of prayer, since there’s a great deal of flooding in Thailand right now. The conference is still happening and Karl will be heading there November 1-7. Please pray for safety and God’s provision for all attending and for our ministry to grow by leaps and bounds thanks to this time.

And while we’re thinking internationally, we’d love to let you hear what God did through Keynote in India this month! The Gap Theory took to the stage to share God’s love, despite many obstacles. One example is the concert at Hindustan University in Chennai. Rain threatened to either cancel the concert or move the show indoors to a less than optimal venue. Campus Crusade for Christ leaders at the university trusted God and continued with the outdoor setting. Before long, the skies cleared and the concert began. More than 500 students filled the courtyard and engaged with the band’s music.

The president of the university came onstage to personally thank the band and give them a gift. At the end of the concert, 111 people indicated a first-time decision to call on Jesus to save them. A number of others asked for more information about getting connected with the on-campus ministry.

Difficult circumstances and great faith were also evident in Hyderabad, a city plagued with political turmoil. Public transportation had not been running for several weeks and this played into concert attendance. All of the schools and colleges were supposed to be shut down due to labor strikes related to the political unrest, but two schools remained open under threat of violence in order to host The Gap Theory for evangelistic concerts.

The chancellor at one of the colleges told the band they kept the school open just for the concert, but planned to release the students after the show. Close to 300 college students stayed for the concert and heard the gospel. At least 10 of them indicated a decision to trust Christ, 25 wanted to know more about Christ and 23 others wanted to get involved with the local ministry.

When asked how this international tour compared to others, Ethan said, “The fruitfulness from this tour far exceeded any other trip I’ve been on. We need to be thinking about going back and seeing God do even more.”

Despite the influence of Islam, Hinduism and other religions, the people of India were open to the gospel of Jesus Christ. More than 400 people indicated a decision to begin a relationship with Jesus during the band’s two-week tour and close to 40% of the audiences indicated some sort of turning towards Christ. God is so good! Thank you for being a part of what God is doing around the globe by supporting our ministry prayerfully and financially. You make stories like this possible! God bless!

For me (Karl), this was the first time leading the Tech Team. We were a team of 7 staff and students who served the rest of the Conference Team and the people who were attending training courses and conferences.

We struggled with some frustrating problems that had never plagued us before: strange Internet slowness and printer problems were at the top of the list. It was stretching for me to delegate tasks to people when I was tempted to try to do the work myself. I still have a lot to learn about being a team leader!

I’m so thankful for my team: Suzanne, Chris, Jeff, Mike, Chris (also called Peter) and Terin. They were a joy to serve with, and we heard that it was a very friendly and helpful tech team (Suzanne probably deserves much of the credit for that).

Thank you so much for praying for our team – we needed it! It is easy to get buried in the tasks and forget that this is a ministry: we are serving so that God’s people are prepared and refreshed to go and serve more effectively.

One of the highlights of our time in Colorado was the incredible speakers that ministered to us during the US Staff Conference. God was definitely at work through the planning team and the speakers.

The first two mornings we got to hear from Francis Chan, who warned us not to listen to people so much. We need to listen to God and His Word. Are we concerned about our reputations with man, or with God? If someone asked my coworkers and friends about my character, and then was able to ask God about my character, would the two line up? Am I going through the motions without really loving God and His Word more than anything else?

Dr. David Platt brought the closing message from Isaiah 6: 1-8. Even though this is a very familiar passage, Dr. Platt’s message was challenging. We have an incomprehensibly great God who has the nations in his hand. We are a sinfully depraved people. We have a scandalously merciful Savior. And that leads us to an indescribably urgent mission – we need to trust Him with everything and not hold back! It was a great way to close the conference and send us back home with renewed purpose.

Thank you for being a part of the team that keeps us going!

Liesl’s update on her classes:  This summer I had the chance to spend four weeks learning more about how to accurately interpret the Bible and how to effectively communicate those truths in relevant terms that people can apply to their lives today.  It was a daunting subject on the one hand, but a great learning experience for all of us.  We had small groups to dialogue and learn with as we each tackled one of 4 scripture passages (mine was 2 Samuel 9, where we learn about God’s promise-keeping and welcome to us by seeing David welcome Jonathan’s son, Mephibosheth).

As usual, I feel like the Bible classes we get to take are a spiritual refreshment time where I get to dig deeper into some aspect of God or another and leave more aware of God and how valuable my relationship with Him is.  I know that my experience is that of most of our staff as we gain wisdom and insight that we can take with us in our regular ministries.  In the photo we have several of our Athlete’s in Action staff, a couple of our Campus Team Leaders, one Canadian staff, and two of us Keynoters.

Keynote Summer Project review:  (Keynote and Impact Music combined)

• 5 Outreach teams
• 38 students
• 13,700 miles traveled
• 52 events
• 5,033 evangelistic exposures
• 311 people indicated a decision to trust Christ

At the final event many students shared about the impact the project had on their lives. For some it was a time to overcome the fear of telling others about Jesus; others wrestled with apprehension about performing in prisons; still others needed to see God move in amazing ways to deepen their understanding of His purpose. As always, God was faithful to do a work, not only the lives of our students, but also in the lives of hundreds who heard about the hope that can be found in a personal relationship with God. He offers forgiveness and a chance to begin a new life.

We look forward to seeing how God will use these students in the months and years to come!

Next month, we’ll tell you about the great speakers that were at the staff conference and Karl’s experience with the tech team.  Thanks so much for your prayers – the crazy technical problems mostly got solved!

You may have heard that Campus Crusade for Christ will be changing our name to ‘Cru’ next year. We are excited about this change, and we like the new name. In the two days since our leadership made the announcement, media coverage (Fox News, Huffington Post, CNN, USA Today, etc.) has shifted from noting the change to implying that we caved in to social pressure to remove “Christ” from our name.

Nothing could be further from the truth! We remain as committed as ever to the cause of Jesus Christ, and we want to be known as a caring group of people who follow Jesus and invite others into a relationship with him. It was actually the other two words, “Campus” and “Crusade” that were removed because of the confusion they create about our ministry. Cru has been a nickname of our campus groups for years, and it seemed suitable (after lots of research) as a name for the entire U.S. ministry.

We had lots of questions, so we figure you may as well. Below is an ‘official’ letter on the matter from Campus Crusade for Christ, and you can read more here (www.ccci.org/cru).

One question we’ve already been personally asked is how will this affect you, our ministry partners. The answer is, very little. How you contribute financially will remain the same (and checks made out to either Campus Crusade for Christ or Cru will continue to be accepted). Mostly, we just want you to know it’s happening and to understand that it’s to further the cause of Christ, not to hinder it. Please feel free to contact us with any of your questions or concerns! God bless you!

Here is the letter from our leadership.

From Keynote in Indiana, several bands formed by the summer project students are finishing up their 3-week concert tours. Here are some comments from some prison concerts:

“I’m really glad they came. Those songs started opening the brick wall I had between me and God, and now thanks to the band that wall that was up is no longer there!”

“You were a positive influence on inmates such as myself. I never would have considered giving my life to God without the help from you.”

“I started praying when I got arrested 2 months ago. But for the first time in years I don’t feel dead inside and I’m happy – I started a relationship with God.”

“I feel very good to know that there are others that care about me, and who want to help me change my life.”

From the Staff Conference Team in Colorado, things have been going well. Karl is leading a wonderful team of technical people: Jeff from the Jesus Film Project, Mike from the Office of the President, Suzanne and Chris from the IT Group (Karl’s previous office), and Chris and Terin, our summer project students. We have a great mix of perspectives, knowledge, and experience.

We’ve been setting up offices, fixing computers, linking people to information, and generally serving wherever we can. Please pray that we would be granted wisdom from God – we have been struggling with some strange network problems.

Liesl has just finished the first of two classes that she’s taking this summer. Reading ahead made it less stressful than we expected. Please pray that the Biblical Communication class goes as well for the next few weeks.

Thank you for supporting us with your prayers and finances! We are looking forward to the big US Staff conference in July. It’s going to be filled with fun, friends, and new technical challenges for Karl’s team.

This edition features an outreach trip to Australia, Keynote’s Summer Project, and the new Keynote.org web site.

To see the newsletter, click this link.

I can’t believe it’s May already! With Easter so late this year, it’s thrown me off. We hope you all had a wonderful Easter, too, remembering what a wonderful, loving Savior we have in Jesus!

Keynote has soooo much going on this month. Every May we have our annual fund raising Golf Challenges, so we would love your prayers for God to use them to provide for our ministry expenses. These funds do everything from paying the electric bill to sending teams out on the road, so they are vital to Keynote fulfilling the ministry God has called us to.

Keynote is also shifting gears around this time to preparing for this year’s Summer Project! We have a smaller group of students, only 34, this year. There will be two bands and one film team formed out of students and staff. They will all learn how to communicate the love of God effectively using the medium of music or film to share their personal stories. Then they will hit the road!

God uses the training time so greatly in the students’ lives as they learn more about themselves and God in the process. Please pray for God to work wonderfully in each of their lives. Pray for wisdom and love to flow from our staff, and pray for many lives to be changed by God through the teams’ efforts this summer.

And of course, New Media Labs is continuing to work on channeling new media forms into great ways to reach people and connect believers with ministry opportunities. We housed a campus staff member and student last night as they came in from St. Louis for a day of meetings on how to take a witnessing tool, called Perspectives, and “make an app for that”. We would also ask for prayer for the Mission Accelerator (just a working name) to be developed on time to train our U.S. staff how to use it out in Colorado in July.

We personally are gearing up for leaving for Colorado in less than 4 weeks! Pray for Karl especially, that he would have wisdom and stamina for organizing and running the tech needs of the whole Staff Conference Team. I am presently reading lots and lots of books for my classes this summer and am already learning a lot. We so love being able to serve our U.S. Staff specifically every other summer.

Lastly, I just wanted to share about online ministry. Both Karl and I volunteer with Global Media Outreach to be available to people who have responded in various ways to evangelistic web sites. Most of the time we get one of two responses, either first time decisions for Christ or recommitments to Christ. Occasionally we’ll see a believer who wants to learn how to share their faith or someone who has not received Christ, but wants to know more. And most of the time it’s a simple matter of sending them a prepared email directing them to a site that will help them learn more about their relationship with God.

Occasionally, though, we have people with questions. Some share really hard sins they’re wrestling with, some just ask for prayers, and some ask all kinds of questions about how to grow. Today I had the joy of answering the latter. It’s such a blessing to see someone sincerely wanting to grow and to get to help them on their way. And it’s a blessing to be able to reach this person (in Africa in this case) from my living room.

I mention this because I want you to have the opportunity to experience this as well. GMO is continually expanding and needs lots of volunteers to help with the responses they receive. They have a great system of training and a community leaders to turn to if you get a tricky one. If you are interested in learning more, check out www.gmojoinus.com. God bless you!

Karl is increasingly busy with regular Keynote tech needs, and preparing for our US staff conference time out in Colorado this summer. He will be directing the tech team out there this summer for the first time and is still overseeing parts of the project to use technology to connect people with global ministry opportunities. The goal is to have that developed enough to train our staff to use it this summer. And he has a birthday tomorrow!  [this was written on 3/30 -kwk]

I just did an overhaul of most of the Keynote library. We keep resources on hand to train and develop our staff, and it occasionally needs some reorganization and attention . My highlight of the month though, was being able to host friends from Orlando who we used to work with. Keynote occasionally has communication trainings. This past week was a marathon of Comm Lab and then Speakers training (for those whose ministry is predominantly in front of groups). Our friends came in for the latter, and stayed with us, so that we could care for their little girl and make it possible for both husband and wife to attend.

It was a pleasure just to reconnect and hear how God is using them, but it was also a joy for me to use my home to serve. Ironically, my back got cranky, and made it tricky to take care of their child, but that turned out to be a blessing, too. Anja and Karl were around to help, and we all thoroughly enjoyed having a sweet, singsongy little girl in the house. I loved seeing Anja rise to the occasion and be so sweet and kind and helpful with her. It did my heart good (especially after a week of dealing with her sin issues, and my sin issues, too).

And as for Anja, she’s proud to be up to my chin now, excelling in 3rd grade, and will test for her karate gold belt this week. She also is looking forward to spring break, but thinks it’s awful that it starts on April 1, because she can’t do April Fools jokes at school

Karl and I also do some online missionary work with Global Media Outreach (affiliated with Campus Crusade for Christ). This past week they asked us to prepare for a lot more contacts to come, as they were going to have a 2 day campaign to reach 2 million people. Here’s what happened!

God drew over 2.5 million people to the websites, over 244,000 people indicated decisions for Jesus Christ and we saw about 26,000 emails requesting follow up from our Online Missionaries.

From there we direct people to web sites designed to help them grow in their faith. We also do our best to answer questions they have. We know that not everyone truly “gets” the Gospel, but the chance to help so many people grow to know the Lord is amazing.

Thank you for being a part of all of this! Your love and care, prayers and financial support make our lives in ministry possible, and we love having such a wonderful team like you! God bless you in your victories and in your struggles,

Liesl, Karl, & Anja

How have you gotten connected with opportunities to serve in your local church or another ministry?  Many of you filled out a form and dropped it into an offering plate or a collection box.  Over the years, thousands of students have done the same thing, expressing interest in a summer mission trip, or serving on the worship team, or joining a small group Bible study.

Here’s a different way:  Imagine that you’re a college student at a winter conference, and you’re told that you can be connected to ministry opportunities by sending a short text message.  You send the text, and get a reply that sends you to a form that lets you indicate the kinds of opportunities that you’re interested in.

Because the system is connected to facebook (and you and your friends are avid facebook users), you soon find out that several of your friends are interested in the same overseas trip as you.  You’re even more interested in the trip now that you know that you could be serving with some of your friends.

In another context, the local leadership sees that a student, Alice, has expressed interest in an investigative Bible study.  The system shows them that Alice’s friend Beth is a student ministry leader and Beth gets to introduce Alice to the Bible study and eventually the Savior.

This is just part of the vision that we have for a project that we’re currently calling the “Mission Accelerator”.  It’s already under development, and we’re praying that the first phase will be ready for use on campus in the fall.  Down the road we hope that it could be used by churches and other missions organizations.

Please pray with us for:

• wisdom for all of the decisions that will need to be made by leaders, the project manager, and the coders
• a spirit of teamwork and cooperation
• quick progress

Thank you for your partnership with us!  We’ll keep you informed as progress is made.

Serving the Campus Ministry

For many years, Keynote has been sending representatives to various college Campus Ministry Christmas Conferences in order to recruit students for our own Summer Project or for internships or full-time positions.

In recent years, God has opened doors for Keynote to be a resource to some of these conferences through worship leading, program planning and emcee training.

In December of 2010, Keynote sent teams of musicians to San Diego, Minneapolis and Boston to lead worship bands of students from the respective regions. We love being able to work alongside the Campus staff and help shepherd these students in becoming “lead worshipers.”

Along with helping conferences musically, Keynote has served in other roles. Keynote was able to serve the conference in Denver again in the area of program planning. Several of the student emcees at conferences across the country were trained at Keynote!

You all could pray for the students around the country that God wants to be a part of the 2011 Summer Project to begin the application process! (And if you know any students who would like to take part, send them our way or to www.keynotesummerproject.org)

International Opportunities Abound

• January – Slovenia – our team recently returned this weekend from worship leading at the Eastern European Campus Crusade Staff Conference
• January – Spain – worship leading at a mid-year conference for Short-term International Staff serving in North Africa, the Middle East, Eastern Europe and Central Asia. This team is coming back now
• March – Egypt – ad hoc band, The Replicas outreach tour (Please Pray for Egypt. The country is having great unrest presently. Pray for our team to know how to prepare in light of the uncertainty of being able to go or not.)
• March – El Salvador – ad hoc band, Stop on Green outreach tour
• April – Guatemala – Communication training
• May – Australia – blackSoil project outreach tour

New Media Labs

Please pray for the team to be creative as they field multiple requests for tech tools, apps and language translations for existing tools. They have a lot of great new ideas, so pray that God would help their time and energies to be used well.

Each year Open Doors releases the World Watch List, a detailed analysis of Christian persecution worldwide. In this free resource, countries are evaluated and ranked according to the severity of persecution that occurred in the past year.

Check out the list at http://members.opendoorsusa.org/worldwatchlist/ and pray for Christians in these countries!

It was especially nice to slow down after a full month. Keynote’s Vision Event went sooo well. If you weren’t able to watch Karl’s live broadcast you can see it now at www.keynoteconnection.org.

The weeks before and after that event also saw us hosting Tom and Harro, two CCC Australia Interns! They just released an iPhone app to help others share the gospel. They took the most widely used booklet for understanding who Jesus is, Would You Like to Know God Personally?, and made it available through the iTunes store (since it’s the Australian version, it has slight differences from the American booklet).

Similar to Have You Heard of the Four Spiritual Laws, Knowing God Personally is the perfect tool for helping people understand how to have an intimate relationship with God. People can download the application free of charge. Harro grins, “It’s a God thing because we didn’t advertise it. We placed just one wallpost on Facebook and it took off from there. The first week the Lord allowed us to have 350 downloads from 31 countries.”

We had them come in to brainstorm ways we can use modern media to communicate the Gospel in more creative ways (and do programming). Keynote’s New Media Labs has been working on God Tools, another app for iPhones (and soon for Android phones). God Tools offers several Campus Crusade for Christ gospel booklets and the great articles from EveryStudent.com. If you have an iPhone or iPad, you can download Knowing God Personally and God Tools for free from the app store.

This month we’ve also had a number of conversations that reminded us just how challenging it can be for most of us to know how to clearly communicate how to begin a relationship with God. Even long-time believers find it hard to know what out of the whole Bible and their lives to focus on when talking to someone who doesn’t know God.

Simple outlines of the Gospel can be a big help.  Whether you get an app for your phone, carry a paper copy with you, or use some other method, the important thing is to be ready to share, in a simple way, what God says. I find that just getting the 4 points in my head (and keeping them there) can make it so much easier to know I’ve clearly shared what’s important when I have limited time. When in doubt, just read through the booklet with someone!

Most important is praying and trusting God to work in people’s lives. He’s the life changer and he can use all of us as we step out in faith to share our own stories of God in our lives. You don’t have to “do it perfectly” for God to use you to share His love with someone. We’ll be praying for all of us to trust God and reach out this Christmas season.

It was a wonderful evening celebrating what God has done, is doing, and will do through Keynote!

GLAMMM in Singapore

Two years ago, Keynote was able to host our first International Summit for dialoguing about music and creative communications as ministry. Last week, Keynote’s Singapore-based counterpart hosted the second one! About 30 CCC staff from 15+ countries attended the Global Leaders in Arts, Music and Media Ministries conference. They were able to worship, share ideas, and build relationships that will help them grow their ministries around the globe with more fruitfulness.

After flight troubles that caused them to travel from LA to Singapore through Paris (44 hours of travel), Chris Zaugg, Keynote’s Director, had the opportunity to share about ministry planning and Chris Kellum, International Director, shared about partnership. Both had lots of good conversations with other leaders who want to learn, share, and explore next steps.

Inmates, Soldiers and Romanians

This month alone, bsn has been all over the map. They went to Ft. Knox and performed for 1100 basic training recruits, seeing 21 decisions for Christ! Then they went on a three-prison mini-tour where 325 inmates heard the gospel, 13 indicated a first-time decision to trust Christ and more than 24 said they wanted to talk more with someone about a relationship with God.

Then, with only a few days to do laundry, they packed their bags and headed to Romania for a seven-city outreach tour (October 7-25.) The concerts have been well attended, with hundreds of people being exposed to the gospel. At a few of the shows, the Campus Crusade hosts estimated that close to 95% of the audience were unbelievers. One show yielded more than 100 comment cards with all but two of them indicating an interest in further contact from the hosts!

Vision Event 2010

On November 6, Keynote will be hosting our annual Vision event, highlighting how we’ve seen God move this year! We’d love to have you all here personally (and if you’re in the area and want to come, please let us know!!!), but Karl will be broadcasting the event live, and you won’t want to miss it. Tune in to www.keynoteconnection.org at 7:20 pm to join in and catch the vision!

Please pray for the Keynote staff as they seek to see God direct the event while they work hard to make it happen (and pray for the internet broadcast to go smoothly, since that’s Karl’s job). God bless you!

Why is Campus Crusade’s ‘Music Ministry’ doing Internet stuff?

This is a question that we’ve heard recently, even from within Campus Crusade for Christ.  If people within our organization are confused, it’s probably unclear to some of you who partner with us, too.

What guides everything that Keynote does is Acts 17 and the creative communication of God’s unchanging message.  Paul entered Athens, saw the spiritual worldview of the people there (vs 22), and explained the gospel to them.  He even used the words of their own poets.

Keynote’s mission has always been to use the language of “pop culture” to plant the gospel in the hearts of lost people.  It started with music ministry and has expanded to three outreach arms:

Keynote Artists

blue sky nine and our other artists continue the original ministry, styled for today’s audiences.  Weaving together songs and stories that touch hearts, they call people to respond to the gospel.  blue sky nine recently returned to a prison that they’d played at last year.  After the concert, a man who had committed his life to Christ at last year’s concert came up to talk to the band.  He described how he’d seen his life change incredibly and then said, “There’s nothing I want to remember about being in prison… except the day last year that blue sky nine came.”  That’s what it’s all about!

Keynote Creative Communications Group

This team exists to equip, coach, and train others to communicate the gospel through clear, compelling, and creative media.  They provide communications training to Campus Crusade staff and students around the world.  They also run the Keynote Summer Project.  Through the Summer Project bands this past summer, 1048 people chose to follow Christ!

Keynote New Media Labs

This newest part of Keynote is taking creative communication to the Internet/mobile/digital realms.  Communication has changed – it used to be one-to-one (conversations) or one-to-many (lectures or broadcasts).  Now it’s many-to-many.  A video uploaded to YouTube or a statement published on facebook might lead to many online exchanges between people who have never met face-to-face.  How can we bring the Gospel into these conversations?

I’m sure that many of you don’t use facebook – that’s OK.  But 500 million people do, and they spend a lot of time there.  What if we could take the Gospel to them where they are?  We can!

Obviously, technology is key to all three of Keynote’s outreach strategies.  It’s exciting to be in the middle of this, helping any way that I can to move these efforts forward.  Thank you for the part you play in keeping us going through your prayers and gifts!