Over the last year, I’ve learned new vocabulary words. As our team works more closely with other Cru teams, we’ve found that each team uses different terms to talk about work. If we’re going to be effective, we need to learn each other’s languages. I’ve actually leaned back on some of the training I took before moving to the Philippines.

This week, I’ll be in online meetings every afternoon as part of a “narrative workshop,” one of those new terms. The workshop includes Cru communicators from across the US and from different branches of Cru, such as the Campus Ministry, Athletes in Action, FamilyLife and others.

We’ll look for themes that we can all incorporate into our work throughout 2021.

This year, our overall focus was division and reconciliation — both between people and God and between one another. You can see some of this play out on Cru.org, Cru’s main website, and our stories in Cru Storylines.

People feel separated from God in light of COVID-19. They are asking, Where is God and how is He at work? Cru.org addresses some of these questions directly, while our stories show how God’s people are responding with caring and innovation.

Our story, “Summer Missions Went Virtual,” shows how between February and May, Cru leaders changed all of their efforts to send students overseas for summer missions. Leaders and students “traveled” online to places like Australia (shown in the photo above), Russia and others, and connected with students via Facebook, Instagram and other social media platforms. People in those places heard about God’s love and grew spiritually with help from people who were in the U.S.

As our team cannot travel right now, we had to search our files for photos to illustrate the story. Our writers did interviews by phone and online. So much has changed, but we still share how God is reconciling people to Himself.

As you think of us this week and in the near future, please pray for the narrative workshop and that our teams will continue to learn how to our work with no international travel through the end of this year. And please pray for wisdom for both of Anne Marie and me as we supervise the work of communicators telling the good news of what God is doing around the world.

We’re grateful for your partnership and prayers.