The 2009 Keynote Vision Dinner (which is one of Keynote's primary fundraisers) will have a live stream viewable over the Internet.
Volume 4, Issue 10
Opportunities for you
Campus Crusade for Christ as an entire ministry has the tag line “Helping Build Spiritual Movements Everywhere.” Keynote is just one part of Campus Crusade. We thought we’d share in this newsletter just some ways you can have an opportunity to be involved.
Global Media Outreach (GMO) has opportunities for you to serve from your own home as an online missionary. Did you know that millions of people search for God everyday online?
In the month of June 2009, 1,030,581 people indicated a first time decision to follow Jesus or a decision to recommit their life to Christ through one of more than 90 GMO-hosted Gospel websites. Of those, GMO online missionaries responded to 180,000 people who e-mailed the ministry asking discipleship. Decisions are happening at an average of 33,000 per day.
GMO has been seeing exponential growth in recent years. In all of 2007, GMO saw 1.3 million in the entire year on its then 71 websites. In all of 2008, GMO saw more than 3 million decisions. In 2008, they launched a cell phone ministry that helps reach 300,000 people every month.
Computers allow us to respond to people from all over the world who need Jesus, right from your home. If you can send an email, you can share the gospel. You can control how many emails you receive. You decide how much time you spend online. Safe! No one sees your email address and no one can send you spam. The training and resources are provided. 
Go to http://www.GMOJoinUs.com/ to learn more and apply!
Family Life is one ministry Mike and I have personally been ministered to by. We attended the Family Life Weekend to Remember Conference in 2005 as a pre-engaged couple. This Fri.-Sun. marriage conference is for engaged couples and married couples. We can testify that it is WORTH IT! Building into and investing in your marriage is indeed a necessity and profitable.
We want to thank you! Our ministry would not be possible without your prayer and financial support. To express our appreciation we want to invite you to attend FamilyLife’s Weekend to Remember marriage conference at a special rate of$69/person. That’s almost half of the regular rate of $129 person.
Imagine…a romantic weekend to
Last year over 80,000 people found renewed hope, joy, love romance and effective tools for their marriage. We want you to experience this life-changing Campus Crusade ministry event.
To receive this special rate visit http://www.familylife.com/cccpartner and use the promotion code CCCsupport when you register. There are over 100 events across the Unites States. We appreciate you and care deeply about your marriage and family.
PRAYER REQUESTS:
When I seek to point people to Christ, it is because I am convinced that He alone is God’s answer to life’s deepest problems.
-Billy Graham
Volume 4, Issue 9
Branching out online
Going online these days is just like picking up a phone for many. The communication continuum keeps escalating. Mike remembers when world wide web was just text and not graphic pictures. Even with so many advancements, ministry IS happening in the realm of the World Wide Web. So you ask, what does that have to do with Keynote? Well, our ministry is branching out. Not only is music a creative element of sharing the Gospel but so is the internet and screen based technology. Keynote was tasked by Campus Crusade leadership to spearhead some of this “virtual ministry”.
On a whim, Keynote’s executive director posted our ventriloquist/comedian, Dave Pendelton’s Gospel presentation to youtube.com. The only promotion he did was put in his Facebook status to check the video out. To date the counter reads 18,451 viewers. One viewer posted the following comment “at first I thought it would be a comedy thing yet, I just find out in my self that it could have been the most valuable video in YouTube I have ever watched...” Dave personally followed-up with the viewer and that viewer shared that he was “trying to search about some famous ventriloquist and it’s a fact that your are one of them I have watched a lot of them including yours and what can I expect? It’s all just for laughs. But when I saw this video about God I felt thankful for even a short span of time you’ve able to share God’s way and I really admire those persons.”
You can watch that video at:
http://bit.ly/DPvideo
In a more intentional way, Keynote is working on some websites that will actually equip the body of Christ to use the Internet for ministry. Some of you may be familiar with what a widget is. No, we aren’t referring to the generic name used along with “thing-a-ma-jig.” The widget we are talking about is in essence a container for information that is placed on a website whose content exists somewhere else. The way Keynote intends to equip the body of Christ is by creating a repository of these widgets that churches, ministries, and individuals can use on their own websites. The widgets will be life giving resources for your online world! People can compile endless combinations of these widgets to create exactly the kind of outreach they are looking for.
Right now, Keynote has a team of people building the widgets and gathering various sources for the information. The goal is to be able to make the repository as well as our own website using those widgets available in early October.
Keynote’s Summer Projects film track produced a documentary this summer. The team of two students and two staff filmed, edited and directed the documentary.
"Experience a Life-Changing Summer” can be viewed at:
http://bit.ly/KEYdocuVid
PRAYER REQUESTS:
Please continue to pray for Keynote as we seek more ways to connect with people through social media.
Mike and Leslie enjoying the view at the top of Horsetooth Mountain after they hiked up there.
Mike's old Student Venture Staff friends (Debi & Robin) pause for a photo with him.
Friends who are also a Campus Crusade staff couple meet for dinner with the Rebholz's. Both couples soon (mid August) to celebrate 3 years of marriage within 1 week of each other!
Mike's second home, the presentation desk, during the staff conference.
Staff who are new to Keynote as Mike was or is their support coach.
Leslie with friends (Rose and Omar) from her previous ministry with Life Builders.
Moby Gym filled with 5,000 stateside Campus Crusade staff for the conference.
This year's staff conference theme was "Connect".
One of Campus Crusade's national leaders addresses staff during the conference.
Keynote led worship for the staff conference.
Singing and signing language (far right) to our Lord.
A view of the stage from the upper section of Moby Gym.
Tenth Avenue North, a christian band, gave a concert.
Mike and Leslie taking a pose on a rock half way up the mountain on their hike.
Upclose to a deer during our hike.
Lecrea, a christian hip-hop artist, gave a concert which Mike. You may remember Mike ran lyrics for him during the Impact conference at Christmas time. Someone accepted Christ at that concert because of the lyrics.
Leslie and Mike get a moment together as Mike is working the sessions during the conference.
A stop at a store in Estes Park with a furry friend, a moose.
Mike and Leslie spent an evening with her brother John and his girlfriend, Marcy.
Powerful worship times during the staff conference.
Thomas, Liz and Leslie stop at Keynote's booth during the Ministry fair.
The name of the candy may come to mind (one Leslie’s favorites too) but that is how we’d describe our recent staff conference we just returned from in July. Our biennial Campus Crusade for Christ staff conference is held on the campus of Colorado State University where 5,000 US based staff meet.Plenty…
Of opportunities to serve/work (Mike- tech team, Leslie- Keynote product booth, encouragement team)
Thank you dear friend for entrusting us, believing in us, supporting us, encouraging us, praying for us, sending us….We are grateful for how you invest in His Kingdom Work! (In the midst of a computer replacement and preparing for our US Staff Conference, this electronic newsletter never got published. I'm sorry that I didn't catch that until now)
BAND:Mangofish
DETAILS:The Indian Creek Correctional Facility
STORY:We delivered entertainment to the inmates andsome of them said it was like the highlight of the year. That night we shared Brad’s life story and then later the
Gospel and also passed out the comment cards. By the end of the show we got the inmates to stand up and sing along with us in “Lifeline”. After that they asked for one more song and we had no choice but to go out one more time and do our last song. After the show many inmates came up and talked to us. They were all very nice and friendly too. Many of them were going to be set free in less than a year. Actually thelongest time they have to do is 36 months in that facility
so the security is not all that tight. After tearing down and loading up I found out that there were 26 PEOPLE who started a relationship with Jesus for the first time. The Chaplin was very impressed at Keynote ministry and really wants to partner up for later events as well.
BAND:Young Isaac
DETAILS:Bathurst High School, Australia
STORY:The second show was 45 minutes later and involved more students because they were actually required to sit down in chairs. There were a couple hundred students from the 9th and 10th grades. Our team felt like the 2nd show went over better
than the first and kids even wanted to talk to us afterwards including a boy named Dalton. This boy named Dalton had a dear friend who was killed by his own father, stabbed several times bya screwdriver to death. This boy Dalton had been struggling to understand how he can forgive this dad who killed his own son
and Ryan from our team was right there to pray with him after the show. This was our first amazing answer to prayer, revealing to our team that God specifically wanted Ryan to share his story to Dalton in order to encourage him to continue seeking God’s forgiveness in his heart.
SUM SUM Summary (Keynote Touring Groups)
# of bands: 4
(Mangofish, Young Isaac, Swerve and Stop on Green)
Total miles traveled: 16,459 (U.S. and Australia)
Total concerts: 52
Total attendance: 6,231
Exposures to gospel: 5,751
(people heard an evangelistic or pre-ev presentation)
Decisions for Christ: 522
In recent months I (Mike) have been faced with numerous friends, neighbors, and family who are facing significant life crises -- everything from stage 4 cancer, to Lyme disease, to gallbladder disease, and even amputations. Through websites like Caringbridge.com, Carepages.com, and even Facebook.com, their struggles are lived out in very public ways. They are struggling through questions that quite frankly I’ve never had to face in my own life. My wife Leslie has been encouraging me to write some of my thoughts on the topic, but I’ve felt that I’m the wrong one to write. I’m not the one who is going through these things. But, my friend Polly just wrote something that made me say, “I have to write.” Polly has Lyme disease and it has caused severe Autonomic Dysfunction. Polly and her husband Jack work for Student Venture, the jr. high and high school ministry of Campus Crusade for Christ. I worked with them for a number of years from a distance (resourceing them) and at conferences. As I understand it, Lyme disease (caused by a bacteria) when treated, actually causes greater symptoms of the disease as the bacteria are dying off (a process called Herxing). I cannot imagine the hard balance between experiencing a worsening of the symptoms but also killing off the bacteria that cause the disease in the first place. For Polly, any illness is magnified, as her immune system can’t respond normally. Needless to say, this causes life to look significantly different. Polly’s perspective on life with Lyme disease (along with the example of so many of my other friends who are suffering) inspires me to live differently. Here are Polly’s words: …as i began to pray the Holy Spirit quickly met me and said, "You can worry about how this disease will affect you next week, five years from now...or you can trust me and live abundantly where i have you each and every day." Certainly i grieve this awful disease and wonder how much less active or shorter my life may be because of it, but i would much rather rest in His peace and enjoy what He gives me than be bitter, hurting mom and wife.i don't know, i guess when the Lord said that i just got two pictures of myself, each 20 or so years from now. One was as a bitter woman bemoaning the fact that i can't run around in the woods with my grandkids as i would like to, worried if i would live to see their next birthdays. The other was one on a porch in a cabin in the woods. I'm laying in a lounge chair surrounded by my kids and grandkids laughing, snuggling reading books and marveling at God's creation which we are surrounded by. Who of you by worrying can add even an hour to your life? i choose scene two. As Polly stated later, she wants to make clear that “choosing scene two is only by the grace of God and it is a moment by moment dependence.” As I look at my own life, I have nothing to complain about compared to people like Polly, or my friend Barry who has finally had to have his foot partially amputated due to a motorcycle accident over ten years ago. I don’t suffer in any way shape or form in the way they do. My friend Valerie is another example. Several years ago, she had an emotional break down that caused her life to come to a screeching halt. But the Lord did amazing things and healing was brought about. More recently she was diagnosed with stage four cancer. One thing after another has hit in Valerie’s life and yet she offers these words: Does our life sound stressful? It has been. Have you read the book of Job in the Old Testament? Here’s a guy who just kept getting bad news. By the end of all the terrible news, he is grieving his losses and even depressed, but he never curses God for his circumstances. Most of the rest of us would ask, “Where does it stop?” The truth is, it may not stop, but from the beginning of my breakdown God has been teaching me that He is my Loving Father who suffers with us, and for us. Healing our souls and growing our love for Him are top priorities for God. In the midst of a lot of hardships and trials over the last few years, God has shown his faithfulness to us, and we are thankful for His continued pursuit of us. He has wept with us as we grieve, and rejoices with us, as we are encouraged. As I look at these friends and the struggles they are going through, I loathe my own attitudes. How in the world can I feel bad about my own circumstances? My circumstances are nothing compared to these. The amazing thing is that Polly, Barry, Valerie, and I all have a personal relationship with God that sustains us in our present circumstances. Psalm 46:1-3 God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear though the earth gives way, though the mountains be moved into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam, though the mountains tremble at its swelling. I don’t know about you, but these examples make me want to choose to live my life differently. When “tough” times come, I choose not to complain but to embrace the path that God is taking me on. I will choose to embrace the moment so that, like Polly’s example, I will choose scene two. To read more about these friends I have mentioned, you may visit their Caring Bridge websites: Polly Noonan http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/momoffive/ Barry Atwell http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/barryatwell/ Valerie Yarbro
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