Starting Monday, the 30 thousand-plus students at University of California, Berkeley, Ca., will have something to talk about. The Berkeley chapter of Campus Crusade for Christ (CCC) will launch “The Jesus Project” during their “Who is Jesus Week”, where 3,000 button-pins will be distributed on campus to give students a chance to say what they really think of Jesus.
“It’s an uncensored conversation about Jesus. We don’t want to try to control and manipulate this event but we want to invite voices into this conversation,” said Brad Fulton, director of CCC at Cal.
The button-pins will read: “I think Jesus is…” leaving the defining adjective to be filled in by the recipient.
Any kind of description of Jesus can be written on the button-pins, positive or negative. But that’s okay, according to Fulton, who said, “People are already saying antagonistic thing about Jesus but putting them on the table will help to resolve those misconceptions.”
Fulton said that someone might even write: “I think Jesus is a hypocrite.” However, it’s part of the project. Even if they wrote a negative comment on the button-pin, upon displaying the it on their backpacks, they might learn something from justifying their stance.
"It’s fruitful for the person on defense," said Fulton.
What the campus ministry is hoping will happen is students will begin to talk more about Jesus.
“This week is about the individual conversations that we will be having with our roommates, floormates, classmates, and friends,” says the Cal chapter of CCC Web site.
The fellowship will also be holding a forum on Thursday with a panel of professors from UC Berkeley in the Valley Life and Science Building to further discussion about Jesus.
In the arena of any discourse, Fulton asserted, “I think Jesus can defend himself quite well.”
