Outreach at UCSD

UCSD is an interesting campus. Students on campus take great pride in academic achievement and success. In fact, their library was designed to be the “tree of knowledge”. (The ironic story there is that the builders forgot to account for the weight of the books in the library so they had to build supports for the structure so now it looks more like a rocket ship.) There is a long sidewalk shaped like a snake that stretches hundreds of feet next to the library. We heard today that this liberal University is allowing students to put student-made pornographic videos on the campus TV network for the whole campus to see. During our campus days, we have seen students out actively promoting Islam and pro-choice positions. These students are not just smart, they seem to be very active as well.

And, God is moving at UCSD! On one of our campus days, our group talked with nearly 200 students. We recorded the survey results and found that the most common answer to the question, "If you could put all of your desires on a scale from 1-10 with 1 being the things you desire least in life and 10 being the things that you desire most in life, where would you place your desire to know God?" The most common answer, by far, has been "10." The average of all the answers has been just over "7."

I wanted to share just a couple quick stories. Justin met Glen and Kathy, a couple of premed students at UCSD, in the cafeteria after they had just taken a biochem exam. He sat down and began going through the one of the surveys that we use to initiate conversations. Kathy seemed unsure about talking about issues of faith. But, Glen was tracking the whole time. Glen was ready to hear and he indicated a decision to receive Christ right there in the cafeteria!

Matthew met a student named Matthew who was eating lunch with a bunch of his friends. After going through the survey, he was interested in hearing the gospel. At the beginning of the conversation, Matthew was convinced he was good enough to go to heaven when he died. After talking through sin and his sin deserved death, Matthew explained that he could have a relationship with God based on Jesus’ work on the cross for him. He showed that he was interested in this relationship. Matthew asked him if the prayer of repentance expressed the desire of his life. Matthew responded by saying that it was "exactly right."