NOTE: In the near future, I plan to stop using this site. Instead, I’m sending my whole prayer letters out by email. If you only see my letters here, please email me at mark.winz@cru.org and let me know you want to be added toe the email list. Thanks so much.

Soccer is the world’s most popular sport. This summer, the 2026 World Cup soccer tournament will take place in the U.S., Canada and Mexico. Half of the world’s people are expected to tune in to at least some of the games.

We hope to mobilize Jesus’ followers around the world to share His love through the event. You can take part with your church or in your neighborhood. Go to Victory Beyond the Cup to learn more. Cru and eight other ministries, including I Am Second and the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, are partnering in this outreach.
 
To get a taste of how powerful soccer outreaches can be, take a look at a Cru Storylines article about how Cru’s Athletes in Action outreach is influencing teams in multiple countries in Good News Goes Global Through Guatemalan Soccer.

Lent Devotional

Most years, the team I work with produces and distributes a devotional for Lent or Easter. This year, we focused on a long-term goal and updated our standing Easter page instead. That page includes links to last year’s Holy Week devotional.

If you’d like a new Holy Week devotional, try out His Story, Our Hope, a five-day devotional from StoryRunners. That Cru ministry teaches people how to disciple others using traditional oral storytelling. The last Cru Storylines article that Anne Marie edited, Let Me Tell You a Story: How Bible Stories Open Conversations, was about StoryRunners.    
 
I’m grateful for your prayers and generosity toward my Cru ministry. This month, as you think of this ministry, please pray that thousands of people will take part in Victory Beyond the Cup, Pray, too, for the work I’m doing all year to have resources ready to commemorate Cru’s 75^th anniversary this fall.

Sincerely in Christ, — Mark Winz

Your prayers for my work with the Cru communications team are paying off. Our website has a new page of changed life stories. It already contains two that were written using the new fast-paced story process I developed for our writers and editors.

It starts with explaining an outreach that is mirrored on many campuses around the U.S. each year.

You can see the first article we published: “Perspectives at Rice University.” Here’s part of the article.

The article explains how one student involved with Cru took advantage of the outreach to begin a series of conversations about Jesus with a classmate.

Along with the new articles, the page includes articles we did for Cru Storylines over the years. As 2026 passes, we’ll continue to fill this page with stories reflecting how Cru staff members and ministries today still carry on the work started 75 years ago. 

When you think of me, please keep praying for wisdom for me and our team as we continue to communicate about Cru’s anniversary. We’re planning a special online section with articles and videos to help people know how the past and the future connect. And, like the article from Rice, we’ll help readers know how they can share their faith.

Sincerely in Christ, — Mark

Celebrating Christmas and the New Year close together brings a contrast to my mind. I enjoy the mix of traditions and looking ahead with hope.

What are some of your Christmas traditions? Ours are typical, and likely mirror some of yours. We listen to carols, share a big meal and enjoy generous snacks throughout the day. We watch at least one Christmas movie — “The Muppet Christmas Carol” is a favorite. We play board games and usually complete a thousand-piece puzzle. This year, as is often the case, one of the games was the “pickle gift” to the family.  

Recently, we’ve adopted activities that have quickly become new traditions, like traveling to Wisconsin. Michael has lived near Madison for ten years, and Bethany has been in Green Bay for three. As she likes to host Christmas, we happily take the trip. (In this photo, we’re in front of one of the three lighthouses on Lake Winnebago that we visited.)

As I returned to work last week, I’m still thinking about that mix of tradition and looking ahead. A significant part of my work in 2026 will focus on celebrating Cru’s 75^th anniversary. We hope to show how today’s ministry is built on a rich history.

I’m managing projects that will complement our fall celebration. Throughout the year, we plan to report several short stories each month to show what Cru’s varied ministries are doing now. Alongside these, we’re preparing retrospective updates showing how Cru staff members found innovative ways to share the gospel over the years. We plan to include “The Four Spiritual Laws” booklet, “JESUS®” film translations, Andre Kole’s illusions, and Josh McDowell’s apologetics books among others.

Then, this fall, we plan to coordinate with Cru’s campus ministry to invite people to pray. The campus ministry usually does a 40-day prayer project to start the new school year. We’ll add prayer information for more Cru ministries to set up a 75-day plan.

As 2026 starts, I’m grateful for your partnership and prayers. Please pray for wisdom for me and communications professionals on Cru’s varied teams as we plan how to share the gospel and disciple believers. I wish you all the best for this new year.

Sincerely in Christ, — Mark

As Thanksgiving approaches, I’m looking back on 2025 with gratitude. I hope you’re able to do the same. What were the year’s highlights for you?

At work, I’m grateful that I could help our Cru® communications team develop and distribute our 2025 Easter devotional messages and our soon-to-come Christmas devotional. I also helped our Cru Storylines® team transition to a process that will allow us to report more articles and to do so more quickly. Our final article in the previous process was published a few weeks ago. You can see all those articles at Storylines.Cru.org.

We’re thankful to see God at work in our local church. This year, church members are sharing three-minute testimonies about how Jesus has changed their lives both at church and elsewhere. Anne Marie led a brief training for the congregation in January, and in March, I got to tell my story. Also, we’re grateful for our Sunday school class. We’ve studied the gospel of John and prayer together, and we pray for and assist each other week to week.

I’m grateful for family times this year. We had a refreshing time with Michael and Bethany in Wisconsin this summer. We went there for our Cru staff conference, and since they both live there, we took a week of vacation to visit them before the event.

Then late last month, we traveled to my hometown to celebrate my dad’s 90^th birthday (right). His birthday is in late December, but we wanted to celebrate before winter sets in. More than 30 of us gathered to honor him. We shared stories before singing and cutting the cake. And he told everyone his favorite joke.

And in it all, I’m thankful for you. Your partnership, prayers and friendship are crucial to this ministry. Please pray for my team and our work on a Christmas devotional. It’s designed to help and encourage Jesus’ followers to effectively share the gospel during the season that is named for our Savior.

Sincerely in Christ, — Mark

If you knew that more than 60 percent of the people in the world would pay attention to something, would you look for ways to tie your message to that event? Estimates indicate 5 billion of the world’s 8.3 billion people will watch some part of the World Cup soccer tournament in 2026.

For Cru®, that’s an opportunity to take the gospel to people.

The last full week of September, I was in all-day planning meetings, looking ahead to 2026.  We developed plans for Cru’s ministry to work together as we focus on reaching out to different audiences, with a special focus on youth and families. Participants represented most of Cru’s branches, including Athletes in Action, Campus, City, FamilyLife and Jesus Film, along with several of us from Cru’s headquarters.

While we planned about several topics, much of our time focused on Cru’s 75^th anniversary. Throughout the year, and especially as the 2026-27 school year starts, we’ll emphasize that.

Early in the year, we’ll focus on the Victory Beyond the Cup outreach. The World Cup tournament is planned for next June 11 – July 19, and will take place in the U.S., Canada and Mexico. We want to mobilize and equip Christ’s followers in all walks of life to bring the gospel into sports conversations.

As the interest in the tournament, the world’s most watched sports event, grows, we hope churches and families will host event that open the doors to gospel conversations.

Next week, I plan to once again be in all-day meetings. Instead of people from all branches of Cru, these meetings will be with our U.S. Digital Strategies team. We’ll get to know each other better, pray together and do a service project. We’ll also keep working to carry out the plans we set with other teams in September.

As you think of my ministry, please pray for stamina and wisdom for me and our whole team as we meet next week. And please keep praying for Anne Marie’s health.

Sincerely in Christ, — Mark

Most Thursdays, Anne Marie and I have dinner with a friend from church, Molly. Over the last few years, she has slowly become visually impaired. While the experience has been challenging and often frustrating for her, she continues to trust God. On Tuesday afternoons, Anne Marie visits Molly and often helps her with tasks she can’t do alone due to fading sight. Sometimes they sort mail, run errands or manage paperwork.

In helping Molly, we learned about Lighthouse Central Florida, an agency that provides aid, instructions and equipment that help people who are facing vision loss.

Recently, I was surprised to see that Lighthouse Central Florida played a significant part in our team’s last planned Cru Storylines article. That article focuses on two Cru staff members, John and Lorna, who have each been helped by the organization.

Over several years, we’ve seen John making his way around the Cru office using a white cane. The section of the article about John shows what he’s learned over the years. But the other part of the article is about Lorna who is just learning how to manage life with fading sight.

Back in 2018, we produced an article called “Pursuing Success On and Off the Field” that featured Lorna, a former Olympic-level hurdler. She was serving as a volunteer track coach at a local high school and sharing the gospel with students. No longer able to coach, she’s finding ministry opportunities that she can still take part in.

Soon, our new article, “Losing Sight: God’s Presence Despite Descending Darkness,” will share their stories. And we trust it will offer hope to people like Molly.

As you think of my work, please pray this article will be completed soon and that it will offer hope of God’s faithfulness to those who are facing any type of disability. Please also continue to pray for Anne Marie’s battle with an autoimmune disease. Her symptoms are returning.

Sincerely in Christ, — Mark

P.S. During our Cru25 staff conference, I learned about some alternative methods of generosity that Anne Marie and I are investigating for ourselves. You might find them useful to make the most of your giving — not just to Cru, but also to your local church and other ministries. They include:

    •    Stock Gifts – allowing you to avoid capital gains taxes.
    •    Donor Advised Fund – that streamline your giving with tax efficiency.
    •    IRA Giving (age 70½+) – which can reduce taxable income while advancing the gospel.
    •    Income-Generating Gifts — a source of revenue, with tax benefits that also supports generosity.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me at mark.winz@cru.org or check out the links above.

Thank you for praying for our trip to Wisconsin. We had a great time visiting friends on the way there and vacationing with Michael and Bethany over the July 4th weekend. And we enjoyed two Cru conferences in Milwaukee.

July 9-11, we took part in the Legacy conference. This conference focused on concerns for those of us who’ve served for a long time. We discussed ideas for keeping active in ministry as long as possible. We celebrated Cru’s history and worshipped together with music from the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s.

Then July 12-18, we took part in Cru25 with all U.S. Cru staff members (at right). We heard reports about current ministries and focused on what we hope to do over the next five years. And the music was more up to date (and louder).

During both events, we caught up with friends we’ve worked with in different places and heard from speakers who built up our spirits and offered information we could use. At both conferences, we heard from David and Meg Robbins. David was named Cru’s president last July. They bring wide experience to the role as over the last 25 years they’ve served in several Cru ministries — Campus, City and FamilyLife®. They even served overseas for a time.

Here are a handful of highlights from the two conferences.

• Beth Guckenberger, a member of Cru’s board of directors, shared a saying that she heard in the Middle East that reinforced the work we’ve done in writing and story gathering over the years: “A teaching without a story is like a basket without a handle. You can’t pick it up.”
• During breakout sessions, only one room had people lined up waiting to get in (right). It was the presentation of the new Discipleship Pathway material that I’ve been helping with as a project manager.
• The “JESUS” film continues to break new ground. As of July 10, the film has been released in 2,248 languages. Viewers of the film indicate 31 million decisions to follow Jesus a year — that’s one decision every second. That team has developed New Life Box™ Kits — pocket-sized hotspot devices taken into places, including those closed to traditional ministry, that will send out a wi-fi signal so anyone within range can view the film and download it to their phones. Now, they are working on an animated version of the film, and they have a plan to use artificial intelligence to release the film in more than 2,000 languages simultaneously.
• Dela Adadevoh from Nigeria, Cru’s senior VP for global leadership, demonstrated the truth of Beth’s saying when he reminded us that as Cru staff members we need to work with churches and other Christian ministries. He told a story of Ben who was ill and went to a hospital in Africa. As it was during a season of heavy mosquito activity, Ben was diagnosed with malaria, treated and sent home. But he had a more serious illness and later died. Dela summarized the lesson, “Don’t assume everyone has malaria just because you have the treatment for malaria.”
• Shannon Compere, executive director of Cru’s campus ministry, reported that in the high school ministry, when 2.9 people hear the gospel, 1 person accepts Christ. (She did wonder who did the detailed research to know that it was 2.9 instead of 3.)
• Darryl Smith, Cru’s director of oneness in diversity, reminded us that, “The Father doesn’t care how many fish you catch. He just wants to go fishing with you. And the Father knows where the fish are biting.”

It was a long trip with a lot of miles covered, but well worth it. I’m returning to work reinvigorated for what God is doing now, and with hope for what the near future will bring. I’m especially excited to work on two projects — celebrating Cru’s 75^th anniversary next year and helping get the Discipleship Pathway material to an increasing number of people throughout Cru’s ministries.

As you think of us, please pray as we get back into our routines in Orlando, for Anne Marie’s continued health as she recovers from an autoimmune disease, and for my work on the two projects I mentioned above and several others.

Sincerely in Christ, — Mark

P.S. During our vacation, we visited several sights in Wisconsin with Michael and Bethany, including two lighthouses. And we did a puzzle showing a scene of Lake Michigan from Wisconsin. When we stopped at a park during our visit, Michael noticed that we were standing in the place where the photo in the puzzle was taken.

I hope your summer is off to a good start. We have an exciting next month planned and would be grateful for your prayers.

We plan to drive from Florida to Wisconsin starting this weekend, visiting friends along the way. Once there, we expect to spend the July 4^th weekend with Michael and Bethany, then attend Cru’s staff conference in Milwaukee. We’ll be away from home for three weeks.

Before leaving, my job as a project manager had me looking beyond this summer. I’ve focused on December, as I’ll serve as project manager for Cru’s online Christmas material. Beyond that, I’m looking toward 2026 as I’ll be project manager for online communications surrounding Cru’s 75^th anniversary.

One thing I’ve enjoyed in preparing for the anniversary is the progress of the “JESUS” film. The film was finished in 1979. As a college student, I saw it in a theater. Since then, the film has been translated into more that 2,000 languages so people can hear it in their “heart” languages.

When we lived in Asia and reported about Cru’s work, we saw the film dozens of times in a variety of languages. (I took this photo in a village in Bangladesh in 1991.)

Two related stories stand out in my memory. In 1986, I visited a village on the Indonesian island of Java and saw a showing of the film in Indonesian, the national language. People were interested, and many came to the village square to watch. But the sense of excitement and interest was much greater when Anne Marie and I went there together in 1991. By then, the film had been translated into Javanese. Almost everyone in the village came out to see the film and to hear it in the language they spoke at home.

Over the years, the process for translating and distributing the film has changed. Recording new languages on computers rather than on tape reels has sped up the process. Offering the film to people on video tape, then CD, and now digitally has greatly improved access to people around the world. You can download the free Jesus Film app and share the film with anyone you meet.

The “JESUS” film department has created an array of items, including a version of the film for children, one especially for women, and they’re working on a fully animated version. Their newest “product” is a five-episode fantasy adventure audio drama for the whole family based on the parable of the prodigal son. It was produced by Jesus Film Project and FamilyLife. Go to “The Road to Kaeluma” to learn more.

Please pray that the audio drama will help thousands of listeners grow in their faith. And as you think of us this summer, please pray for health and safety as we drive north (June 28-July 2) and back home (July 19-22), and as we visit with people and attend the conference.

Sincerely in Christ — Mark

As we’ve taught writing classes and coached individual writers over the years, we’ve often pointed them to sections of the Bible for inspiration. I was reminded of one of my favorite examples over the last two weeks as our Sunday School class is ending our study of the Gospel of John.

At the end of the second to last chapter, John explained his reason for writing the book.

Then the final chapter ends with these words, “This is the disciple who is bearing witness about these things, and who has written these things, and we know that his testimony is true. Now there are also many other things that Jesus did. Were every one of them to be written, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.” — John 21:24-25 (ESV).

There are several reasons these passages can serve as a model for a writer. First, the passage from chapter 20 is a clear focus statement. Good writing needs a focus. A clear statement will guide the writer as he or she decides what information, anecdotes and examples to include, and which to leave out.

Often, articles that seem too long feel that way as the writer didn’t limit the contents to fit the focus. Usually, the writer will include the focus statement in the document, as John did. But even if it isn’t included, a focus is needed for the writer to use.

Second, the passage from chapter 21 lets the reader know that John was present. It established his reliability as a reporter. Typically, we don’t ask our writers to state this as bluntly as John does. Instead, we ask them to include specific details that they could only know by being present.

Third, the chapter 21 passage also explains why his gospel might read differently from others the reader might have encountered. He chose the contents to only fit the focus stated in chapter 20.

As you think of us, please pray for Anne Marie as she prepares and leads our class in a summary of the whole Gospel of John to finish our study. Also, pray for my continued work as a project manager. I guess I did OK with my part on the Discipleship Pathway book, because I’ve been asked to be the main project manager for our book publishing team. Please pray that I’ll learn their current processes and needs and successfully help them in the future.

Blessing, Mark

What would you think if you walked into your church and found irrigation equipment between the pews and the altar? I’d be surprised, and would wonder what the trustees thought of this intrusion.

But what if the irrigation demonstration was part of a ministry event that would help Christian farmers serve their families and communities and would draw people who don’t follow Christ to enter the church?

In rural Thailand, a church hosted an event that taught how irrigation and other techniques could benefit the community. It was sponsored by a ministry of Cru®. Two of my coworkers — Sarah Wontorcik, a writer, and Guy Gerrard, a photographer — traveled there to report it.

I invite you to take a look at “Cultivating Hope in Organic Farming.” You’ll read about Runchan, who farms and pastors village churches, and who took part with others from his village. Here’s some of the background that Sarah wrote:

I was excited when I heard that this story was planned. When we lived in Asia thirty years ago, I visited Thailand three times, and Anne Marie was there twice, to report about Cru’s work there.

Meanwhile, I’m working with our Cru communications leaders and the team that works on our website, Cru.org, to make sure stories like this are still told in even more effective ways. I’m also working on several other projects, including a Discipleship Pathway book that will be used by several Cru ministries.

As you think of our ministry, please pray that God will help the group of writers, editors and designers to have an early version of the Discipleship Pathway book ready by mid-July for our Cru25 staff conference this summer. Also, please pray that our article about Thailand will motivate readers to take part in Unto outreaches and that God will continue to meet the needs of people in the most difficult parts of the world through that ministry.

Sincerely in Christ, — Mark Winz