A line on a page.

This fall I took a Church History class online. On almost a weekly basis I was astounded at how little I knew about the history of Christ followers. It was fascinating to learn more about whole centuries of history, and people who sacrificed so much to make the name of Christ known.

Our textbook for the class was 500 pages (no, I didn't actually get all of it read) and it covered pretty much the entire 2,000 years of Church History.

I happened to be paging through the last chapter one day, when a familiar phrase jumped out at me: Campus Crusade! We showed up in the textbook on page 499, in reference to Pope John Paul II, who attended a Cru retreat as a young man in Poland (here is a very interesting article about his interactions with Cru).

After reading the textbook, listening to hours and hours of lectures, and memorizing dozens of names of important people from church history, I was surprised to see Cru get even one line on the second to last page of my text book.

There have been so many instrumental people, churches, groups and movements throughout the last 2,000 years. Seeing Cru near the end of the book really put into perspective how small the organization is in relation to everything else that's happened in history. It's easy to assume Cru is the end-all-be-all when you immersed in Cru culture - even though that is certainly not true.

Seeing Cru in the textbook also gave me a new perspective on seeing how far we have come as a greater church body, and how close we really could be to seeing the Great Commission fulfilled.