Over 2,000 Attend CCC Annual Conference in Indianapolis

An annual conference held by Campus Crusade for Christ concluded on Saturday, Jan. 1 after five days of seminars, outreach projects, prayers, worship, and spiritual growth.

By Kenneth Chan, Tuesday, January 04, 2005

An annual conference held by Campus Crusade for Christ concluded on Saturday, Jan. 1 after five days of seminars, outreach projects, prayers, worship, and spiritual growth. With the theme, “He is,” CCC’s Indy Christmas Conference saw the cooperation of 40 churches in the Indianapolis area, and more than 2,000 students attending from universities in Ohio, Indiana, Michigan and Illinois.

“Bringing in the new year with praying was just amazing. Really just giving this year to God was really awesome for me,” sophomore Marie Hirsch told Ohio University’s Post newspaper. “It was just unreal, and it was different, but I knew God was there, listening to me as I was praying.”

The conference, which is held each year in Indianapolis and culminated in the New Year’s Eve event, began on Tuesday, Dec. 28 and included daily seminars and an outreach project on Thursday.

“[The theme] basically focused on the main attributes of God...as father, friend, lover and king,” said Brian McCollister, director of Campus Crusade for Christ at Ohio University (OU).

The students were allowed to choose which seminars they wanted to attend each day, and McCollister said the topic of each seminar did not necessarily follow this main theme.

“We want to hit a variety of different needs. With more than 2,000 students there, we want to give them a lot of options,” McCollister told the Post.

During the outreach on Thursday, students were able to choose from several outreach activities including visits to a local men’s prison and an outreach to Latinos through partnership with Spanish-speaking churches.

“We delivered boxes of food that are called boxes of love, and they contain a whole meal for a family of about six for the holidays,” said McCollister, who also estimated that thousands of boxes were delivered throughout the afternoon.

While McCollister said the conference “primarily aimed at helping students grow in their relationship with God,” it also “helped them strengthen their ability to reach out to others with the love and message of Christ.”