Wednesday, May 09, 2007

Welcome to our Blog


Welcome to our Blog! A blog is an online web log that is a great way to keep our friends and Ministry Partners up to date on what is happening in our family and ministry.

Newsletters are always a lot of work, and there is always many more stories and pictures of what God is doing in our ministry and family than could ever fit in any newsletter. Here you find changed life stories, links to our Youtube videos and outreach websites and cute Maiya and Anneke Pictures!

We hope you will find the info on our blog encouraging and glorifying to God. We would love to hear what you think. Please leave us your comments right on the Blog by simply posting your comment through the link at the bottom of each post or blog entry. You can also email us through the email on the bottom of our newsletter. (I don't want to post our email here and end up getting spammed)

You can go directly to any of the websites that I mention by clicking on anything you see underlined in the text, Also the pictures will blow up to their original size if you click on them as well. An easy way to find the topics that you are most interested in is to check out, and click on the entry listing on the right side of the page.

We hope you are encouraged by what you find here. Please let us know what you think. God bless, and thank you for your prayers and partnership.

Sincerely;

Gary, Lynda, Maiya and Anneke :)

Tuesday, May 08, 2007

Porn Nation Canada



Porn Nation is an 80 minute, multimedia-based live speaker presentation addressing every student's need for love, acceptance and genuine relationships. The presentation creates an intriguing, non-judgmental picture of the present day culture. Perhaps the greatest power of Porn Nation is in its authenticity and vulnerability. In an increasingly hypersexual culture, porn is a big business. The pornography industry nets over $57 billion in annual sales worldwide. Cable companies brought in a revenue of $177 million from sexually explicit pay-per-view programming.

Perhaps it's time to ask, are we becoming a Porn Nation?


This is the question we are asking university students across North America through our Porn Nation outreaches. Over this past year we (Campus for Christ Canada) hosted Micheal Leahy and Porn Nation at 6 of our Canadian Campuses. We have had a very good response to all of our outreaches bring the Gospel to students through this very engaging and relevant presentation.

I had the privilege of creating a video series as a follow up tool for the outreaches. Brent (University of Saskatchewan C4C staff) and I went to Chicago for a weekend to interview Micheal Laehy and ask some very engaging questions with the goal to harness the popularity of Youtube and the controversial topic of Pornography.

Micheal's Story is truly heartbreaking as he shares about the effect that Pornography had on him and how it cost him his marriage and family. Micheal story doesn't stop with his broken marriage, during a time of going through sexual addiction recovery he heard the Gospel and became a Christian. God then started to reveal his will to him challenging Michael to share his story of sin and redemption to university students around the world.

You can find our Youtube channel for Porn Nation here. I should let you know that Michael does a great job of answering very thought provoking questions on the topic of sex and sexual addiction but some conservative viewers may find it challenging because of the frank sexual nature of the discussion. Also I have strategically tagged the videos with a description that will come up in search engines for those who are looking for the material that I am trying to warn them against. I would strongly suggest only watching the videos that I have produced the user name "pncanada" as you may be offended by some of the videos that will appear beside my videos as they also deal with sexuality in provocative way. Please remember that this outreach and these videos are created for front line evangelism and not for conservative Christians.

I would love to know what you think. Please leave us you feedback on the videos here or (click below on comments) or on the youtube channel.

Thank you for your prayers and partnership.

God Bless you,

Gary

Here are a few links about Porn Nation that I am sure you will find informative. Simply click on the underlined text to go to the websites and documents that I am referring to:

Porn Nation to Pure Freedom. This is the handout that we give to every student who attends a Porn Nation Canada Outreach. It shares the truth about Pornography as well as Michael Leahy's testimony and the Gospel. Click here. Our Canadian website for the outreaches can be found here. or go to www.PNCanada.com

Here is one of our articles about the dangers of Pornography the is posted on our evangelistic website for students : iamnext.com

The best way to prevent being led astray by pornography is through honesty and transparent with your life and online veiwing. Openness and honesty is the best way to fight temptation. We subscribe to Covenenteyes for our internet accountability. It has been very helpful for us as online temptations lurk everywhere these days. www.covenanteyes.com

I would also recommend the X3watch software available through a fantastic ministry called XXXChurch. XXXChurch does a fantastic job of dealing with the topic of Porn for Christians as well as reaching thousands of people involved in the Adult Entertainment industry. www.XXXChurch.com


You can find more information on Micheal Leahy and his expanding ministry at:
www.bravehearts.net

The most popular video of the series has been the one that shares the Gospel with you will find below. I will be posting more content for Porn Nation Canada over the summer.

Pictures above are: 1. A promo poster for our outreaches that we use on Campus. 2. An on Campus vote on what students think about Porn, Good or Bad. You can click on the photos to enlarge them.




Friday, May 04, 2007

Salty Media Links

Every Canadian University has at least one student run campus newspaper. These campus newspapers are a very influential in the battle for the hearts and minds of students around the world. SFU's student paper is called the Peak. With an estimated average readership of 10,000 students per weak, it can be a very influential voice to the student body.

Traditionally the Peak has been a very liberal news paper often publishing very controversial, immoral and anti Christian views. It was through the frustration of seeing a series of comics that was outwardly mocking Christians, Christianity and specifically Jesus, that motivated me to encourage our Christian students to not only respond but to become proactive in reaching their campus through the newspapers.

Here is a list of links that will take you to some of our recent submissions that have run in SFU’s the Peak:

"Jesus Rescuer of Mankind" was recently featured as the Peak's “Letter of the Week” as a response to a back page article written by Muslims called ”Prophet Muhammed:A role model for mankind." The Muslim article clearly takes many jabs at Christianity and Jesus Christ. Paulman's (one of our Christian Authors)response is a very thought provoking piece that shares the truth about Jesus and The basics of the Gospel.


I will post more links to our printed "Peak" submissions over the next few days.

From Canada to the World




We hope you are encouraged through our News Letter. It has been a very encouraging semester of reaching and discipling university students. The Lord has been blessing us through seeing a lot of fruit in the Campus Ministry at SFU and across Canada. Over this past year we have seen an incredible amount of growth through out the campus ministry. 245 students have made decisions to follow Christ! 267 of our Christian students have have obeyed God's calling for Laborer's in his harvest field and are presently starting mission's projects in Calgary, Halifax, Canada,Panama, Africa and Asia! It is so exciting to see theses students take such a significant step of faith to spend their summer with the desire to multiply their faith and start campus ministries on Campuses around the world. For more info on what God is doing through the summer missions opportunities click here.

The Pictures above are of one of our Missions trips to Costa Rica.These pictures are of students reaching out to communities through showing the Jesus film and respomding to the Children who want t pray to receive Christ (Middle) Missions projects like these are always very faith building and very fruitful.

Please pray for all of the 267 Canadian students on missions projects this summer.Pray that God would use them and speak through them as they step out into a new country to share his good news. Thank you for partnering with us!

God Bless,

Gary