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Print 9/11: One Year Later: Hope in the wake of the attacks on America
by Jennifer AbeggI'm not ready to die yet!" yelled Daniel Nimrod, a combat medic, after a plane crashed into the Pentagon on September 11, 2001. From the rubble that horrible Tuesday, he successfully rescued Lt. Col. Marilyn Wills and Lt. Col. Brian Birdwell, both followers of Jesus Christ.
During the six months following the rescue, Lt. Col. Wills and her husband explained to Daniel how Jesus had rescued them from eternal death. The combat medic listened.
In March he attended a marriage conference hosted by FamilyLife, Campus Crusade for Christ's ministry focused on building godly families. In partnership with the Chick-fil-A restaurant chain, FamilyLife offered a free conference and hotel stay to the rescue personnel and their spouses. At the end of the conference, Daniel handed his evaluation form to Joe Pere, a FamilyLife staff member. The combat medic had checked a box indicating that he had accepted Jesus to be his Savior during the weekend getaway with his wife.
"I feel a door that has been closed and locked has been blown open with enough force as to cause a vacuum," he commented, "sucking me into a world that I have never known. God bless you!"
"If we had forgotten how relevant the message of Christ is, it's now in [our] faces," says Peter Smith of Priority Associates, Campus Crusade's ministry to business professionals. "September 11 elevated it so much-everyone was asking the big questions: 'What's the purpose of life?' 'Does God exist, and if so, what difference does that make?'
"Because of the surge of interest in spiritual matters, Campus Crusade ministries transformed how they normally operate and innovated new ways to spread the gospel in America.
The nearly 100 staff members with various Campus Crusade ministries already stationed in New York City couldn't handle the spiritual emergency on their own. While the smell and dust of collapsed buildings still lingered, Chuck Price, the director of Campus Crusade, U.S., urged staff members to travel or temporarily move to New York as part of a spiritual rescue effort. "We no longer have to 'prepare the soil,'" he said at the time, "to make our message seem relevant in our culture."
Having found that to be true, Student Venture leadership invited staff members from around the nation to come to New York for at least a few days. Throughout the year, almost all 240 men and women from the high-school ministry accepted the invitation, like Debbie Say from Orlando, Fla. Most often they distributed No More Fear Kits, which include a New Testament, video, hip-hop music CD and more.
One day, while Debbie was distributing one of the 180,000 kits handed out, she met two girls from Queens who had watched the Twin Towers topple from the window of their high school. She asked, "If you could know for sure how you could get into heaven, would you be interested?"
"Duh, yeah!" they replied.
So Debbie explained how Jesus died for their sins. "They seemed to understand and accept the gospel so easily," Debbie says.
"There was a great openness and a sense of need that people had," says John Sather, director of the No More Fear distributions, "and especially [among] the youth."
"I was so amazed at how quickly [Campus Crusade] responded," says Debbie, who plans to move to New York this fall. "If we had come in any later, the atmosphere would have changed."
Almost immediately after September 11, several Campus Crusade staff members, in partnership with Journey Group, a custom publishing firm that serves Christian organizations, developed the Fallen But Not Forgotten mini-magazine for the New York firemen's memorial. Since then, the evangelistic pamphlets and its many offshoots have been translated into four different languages. More than 11 million have been dispersed throughout the United States and abroad.
The booklet refers readers to an evangelistic Web site called www.911Remembrance.com, which offers stories of triumph. From that site, people can order the "9-11 Remembrance" version of the JESUS video. The movie, taken directly from the Gospel of Luke, features a special introduction with three New York firefighters recounting their experiences at Ground Zero and how their faith sustained them.
"All of us staff members have been changed," says John Austin, who coordinates the current ministry activity in New York. "We are much more aware of our opportunities and abilities."
Mark Brown left his position at Miami University in Ohio to help with the 911 Remembrance Project in New York, a strategy to spread the gospel to the 100 largest cities in America. He kept challenging students to take steps of faith, so he took one himself.
Mark organized Campus Ministry regional directors who hosted breakfasts for pastors. From Anchorage, Alaska, to Birmingham, Ala., 1,183 pastors brainstormed how to spread the gospel to their communities.
"I grew as a leader," explains Mark. "For example, after working with the church, I am convinced more than ever that we need to see God raise up university students to go into the church to lead in winning people to Christ, building them in their faith and sending them to the world.
"Here's Life Inner City staff members already in New York more than doubled their Thanksgiving food donations. Since requests for food drastically shot up after September 11, food pantries were going bare. So HLIC formed a partnership with the Josh McDowell Ministry and other Campus Crusade ministries to produce 16,000 "Boxes of Love." Nearly 1,000 volunteers helped distribute the packages, containing food and Christian resources for those in need.
In Washington, D.C., the Christian Embassy (Campus Crusade's ministry to political and military leaders) organized a day of prayer in December. One-third of the House and Senate gathered to seek God. "There were no press, no staff, no spouses," reports a Christian Embassy staff member. "They slipped from their chairs to their knees and privately as well as corporately called out to God." The last time congressmen assembled like that was more than 100 years ago.
Surely Osama bin Laden and his followers never anticipated that they would help instigate such an interest in Christianity.
"The reason bin Laden did what he did is spiritual - it's sin," says Campus Crusade president Steve Douglass. "The solution must also be spiritual. There's only one solution, only one Person who takes away sin. His name is Jesus."
That's the message Campus Crusade staff members sought to tell. Whether by moving to the city or working in the area they were already in, Campus Crusade staff members mobilized quickly to make use of the spiritual openness in America. To find out about more Campus Crusade ministries and to read more stories from September 11, log on to www.911Remembrance.com.
You can contact the writer, Jennifer Abegg, via e-mail.
Reprinted with permission from Worldwide Challenge, the award-winning magazine of Campus Crusade for Christ International.
Related Links
911remembrance.com
A Time to Remember: 911 slide show
Fallen, Not Forgotten magazine
