Courtney Bancroft

Unchristian

Courtney is the campus missionary to Temple University. She and people that she ministered with in D.C. did the Gospel according to the Simpsons which attracted people's attention. It seems to be that the more attention the program can get, the better. It creates more discussion among the students.

She then visited Villanova which is a private school and tried to gain fundraising from pastors in the area. They were hard on her and her team, discouraging, and she had a hard time getting ahold of pastors. "I can take attacks from the enemy, it's hard for me to take attacks from leaders in the kingdom of God." - Tom Rees.

Part of the reason that Courtney believes she had a hard time was because her name's not known, chi alpha is not know, and pastors get many calls from missionaries asking for funding. "It's easier to give to a land you will probably never see than to talk to your neighbor."

She started ministry at Temple by getting a handful of students from AG churches in the area. She needed 10 students to be able to start the ministry but she only had four initially. Now she has about four Christians at Chi Alpha ministry and about four non-Christians and they host parties and events and she meets with a few of the non-Christians bi-weekly in order to talk about matters of the faith. Courtney had several trials and it seems like nothing but hardships in order to get this ministry going.

Some of the most difficult lessons that Coutrney has learned is that she's a lot worse at ministry than she thought. She had a lot more hesitancy when listening to Jesus' call than she had expected when it came to going to Temple, raising money, and growing in organization.

The top three things that the girls on campus deal with and struggle with are knowing what they want to do with their lives, figuring out what they actually believe, and sex. She suggests for pastors to have people who go to the college to help that pastor get on campus or resource the student to do a Bible study on the campus. Feed the students and hang out there.

Finally, Courtney feels that it has been best for her to simply develop relationships with the students in order to relate Christ to them later when they are interested.