Cru Testimonies

Casey Fiore, former Cru member, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI.

“It just instilled in me that raising support is normal and not being paid for your work is normal. It's like, do you trust God enough to quit a job that is paying you to stay alive and keeping you alive and keeping your roof over your head? I literally quit my job when I was 24 and worked for them for 10 months, had to raise financial support, did not raise enough, lost 30 pounds. It was the worst year of my life. It was just an incredibly damaging experience in a lot of ways.”

Kyla Pilliod, former Cru member, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI.

“It was my freshman year. She was a sophomore. She approached me to disciple me. I describe it as a very toxic relationship. To this day, I think about her and I wanna reach out to her. I know that she's partly left the evangelical church, too. But she definitely had the language like, ‘Well, Kyla that's not biblical.’ Or like, ‘Kyla, scripture says that we need to do this.’ And so my behavior became tied to like, what would [my discipler] think.. I talked to her about that at the end of my semester and told her the discipleship had turned into me worrying what she thought. Like I'm not drawn closer to God. I'm not even thinking about what God thinks. I'm literally thinking about you as my God, that I'm trying to follow. We agreed that we needed to stop. But even like the word accountable or like accountability partner, like all of that is, was very jarring for me for the rest of my college experience. I'm proud of myself for cutting that off.”

Anonymous former Cru member, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI.

"Boundaries don't exist in Christianity at all. If they do exist, you're looked at as unwilling to submit to God. There was this expectation for vulnerability without safety. You were applauded for being vulnerable, but there was never an expectation of confidentiality. You need to share if you want to grow in your faith and grow closer in the Lord."

Anonymous former Cru staff member, Oakland University, Rochester, MI.

"They were the folks I walked through everything with. "It's been hard because these were people who, when they thought I was straight, would stop everything at the drop of a hat for anything I needed." "They were the people who loved me better than anybody I'd ever known for my entire life, but it was very conditional on the fact that I was straight."

Chelsy Albertson, former Cru member, Ball State University, Muncie, IN.

“I call it a "totalistic organization," which in organizational communication means that it is entirely consuming of every aspect of an individual's life. So if you're asking my opinion, I say, Cru is a totalistic organization. Everything you do think about every way you act, every person you're associated with, all the way down to your very purpose for being alive as a human being is encompassed by the belief system of the organization.”

Zac Thompson, child of Cru missionaries, Orlando, FL.

“The world my parents made for me...there was not space for nonbinary people, let alone agender drag queens. I'm all of those things. That world felt so small. It's like lukewarm acceptance."

Sianna Joslin, Rollins College, Winter Park, FL.

“The President was considering changing the non-discrimination policy to allow [Cru] on campus. He was considering changing the non-discrimination policy, which protected against discrimination against sexual orientation and gender identity. We had a very comprehensive non-discrimination policy, and he going to change that, to allow them to actively discriminate against students who wanted to seek leadership in their organization. We had meetings after meetings, after meetings. Finally we met with the President himself. He kept comparing being gay to wearing blue shoes. He kept saying stuff like, ‘Well, if I want my student organization to only allow people who wear red shoes in, then the students with the blue shoes, they're just gonna have to go elsewhere.’ It made no sense the way that he was trying to rationalize this.”

Zac Thompson, child of Cru missionaries, UCF, Orlando, FL.

“My mom also started at the University of Central Florida. She started this thing called Ask Mom, which she would table with other moms and Cru. They would just hand out free cookies to students and basically be like, ‘Hey, we're moms, if you need help with laundry advice, cooking advice, whatever, you can come to our table. We would love to chat. We're empty nesters and we have free cookies.’ So it was a very cute idea. But subliminally, it was to talk and communicate and spread the love of Christ and with a mission.”

Luke J. Roberts, former Cru member, Panama City Beach, FL.

“We would have this event called Big Break during spring break. We would go to Panama City Beach, Florida. We would get a couple hotel rooms and we would just proselytize to people on the beach who were drinking, partying, you know, which was ‘so sinful.’ We would just going up to random people on the beach, trying to make these relationships. We had these little pamphlets we'd use to try to share the Gospel with them using the structure, and then we'd come back at the end of each day to the large group setting and we'd track the numbers. Like, how many people got converted today? And we would really idolize the people who would be able to save the most people.”

Matt Brewer, former Cru staff, University of Mississippi, Oxford, MS

“When I got caught at the gay bar, one of the youth leaders at the time – who sadly committed suicide two years later; he got caught having sex with a 14 year old girl in his youth group – he took me to the campus at University of Southern Mississippi at Hattiesburg. And my punishment for getting caught at a gay bar was I was gonna help the custodians set up for our events. I was gonna learn how to have ‘a servant's heart.’ And they made me basically go around and clean the toilets, empty the trash cans. I took it very personally. And he said, ‘You need to understand something, son. We have people everywhere and you need to remember something: God is always watching.’ I was like, ‘Okay, so are you God? Is that what you're trying to tell me?’ I was like, ‘You know, people go to jail for doing stuff like that. Voyeurism or stalking or whatever.’ And he's like, ‘We have people everywhere, Matt.’"

Casey Fiore, former Cru missionary, North Myrtle Beach, South Carolina

“I went to North Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. They call them projects. You get a job and you do workplace ministry. You're encouraged to start conversations about faith and spiritual things with people you work with. And then you do cold calling evangelism and beach evangelism, too. Aall the spring breakers who come down, the high school seniors who are coming to party before they go to school. You just walk up and down the beach and talk to people about Jesus. I hated doing that from the beginning.”

Mimi Cole, former Cru member, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN.

"It's just very manipulative, too. I think to tell people they're going to Hell and then they can't explore any other beliefs because it's wrong, it's bad, it's leading you astray, it's the devil...I find that really manipulative. And I think it was also just terrible how it made me so rigid towards my parents. Like my parents are religious, but I was like, 'You're not reading your Bible every day. You're not really following Christ.' And it's like, wow, that's really toxic to even think that other people aren't doing it correctly. So it was just a hot mess and it's hard to see people still in it and still supporting something that's so harmful."

Ashley Robin, former Cru member, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, AR.

“There was a huge part of sharing testimony – I'll share mine, you share yours…like deepest, darkest, secret shared. But if these things are shared, they need to be passed on. And so there was not a sense of consent in that by multiple people.”

Rachel Duryea, former Cru staff, West Virginia University, WV.

"I didn't grow up with a Christian community really, because I was older when I became a Christian. So support raising was always very challenging for me. And I know others have felt the same way. A lot of people leave staff simply because they can't afford to be on staff anymore, because people drop off their team and we're expected to work 40 hours a week. And that doesn't really include raising the support we've lost. If your staff account gets below a certain amount, you'll get short paychecks, or some people haven't gotten any paychecks because they don't have the money in their staff account. All the donations you're getting goes into this big lump account. And then they pull your paychecks every two weeks from the money that you have in there. And so if you don't have the money, obviously you're not getting paid. It's a big point of contention, I think, for a lot of people in a Cru, and just was a very stressful part of the job. It's fully 100%, like you're bringing the money in. And Cru also took 12% of whatever you were bringing in for a general fund. And we never really knew like what that was actually going towards."

Zac Thompson, born into Cru culture, Fort Collins, CO.

"Every two years Cru has a big reunion in Fort Collins. So like staff training, I would go every other summer to that, which is like two months living in Fort Collins. Cru, they have some functions and I grew up going to all them. That was my version of a vacation. [The culture] was very performative, but in a way, performing to a specific type of culture that kind of balanced secularism with religion and kind of tried to bridge those two...but it was always under the guise of colonialism. Not physically colonizing, but like mentally colonizing. And also mentally predatory for people who were experiencing hard times."

Tim Thompson, son of Cru missionaries, Colorado Springs, CO.

"We have these legendary stories in our family of, like, the month my parents got a $16 paycheck. When people lapsed or people didn't come through, when there was a shortage of fundraising, that would be reflected in the paychecks my parents got."

Nathan Bosak, former Cru member, California University of Pennsylvania, California, PA.

"I remember at times it felt like Cru was a low key cult. Like with the way they would do things. We had secret meetings. I don't know if I should talk about that in too much detail, but we would have little meetings with the men's community group. lt forced to go. It almost felt transactional. I felt like I had to share these things. They would use [the testimonies] to their advantage, basically."

Rachel Scott, former Cru member, University of Maryland, College Park, MD.

“This man came and talked about sin, specifically…the motivation behind a sin. He was using sexual sin as an example. And he was talking about, where a man's motivation for sexual sin is desire. Whereas a woman's motivation is acceptance and love from a male partner. I heard this story from one of my friends about how they went on a camping trip and one of the guys was like, ‘Yeah, I'm pretty sure women don't even orgasm.’ But yeah, like a lot of ideas that women are not sexual. They just want to be loved by a man specifically. They just want acceptance. Which is like, insane and really scary, really scary to hear these things said by a man to this group of hundreds of kids and then just see his wife like nodding along.”

Olivia Persing, former Cru student, University of Maryland, College Park, MD.

"Another thing with CRU's culture is they're huge on purity. It was just super emphasized over and over and over again. When I first started going to therapy, I was talking about the application [to go on staff in Australia for a mission trip] and my therapist got so mad, and was like, 'This is really a breach of privacy,' and, 'They should not be asking these questions.' And it was super invasive. Like, 'Oh, do you struggle with porn? In great detail, explain the last three scenes that you watched.' That's the main question that stood out to me, 'cause I was like, this is so uncomfortable."

Anonymous former Cru missionary, Washington, D.C.

“I don't think we really did anything in all honesty. I don't really know why I asked a bunch of people for money for this. I found that very problematic, that I was asking people for money for something that felt more like spring break than missions.”

Kristian Mischke, former Cru member, University of Maryland, Baltimore County, MD.

“I personally had some trouble figuring out if this was something that I actually wanted to do, or if this, something that was more of a social pressure for me to do. And I ended up doing it because I was like, what's the worst that could happen?”

Luke J. Roberts, former Cru Vice President, University of Maryland, Baltimore County, MD.

“I didn't honestly know how to have real friendships with people who weren't other Christians, ‘cause it's all based on some agenda to convert people. Cru doesn't know how to foster real connections because your connection with the person is not actually based on real love of the person; it's based on this agenda, this larger narrative, which is we're all here to exist for a separate purpose rather than to just be and to love one another. It is to go out and convert other people, to bring them all to Christ.”

Jake Simmons, former Cru member, University of Maryland, Baltimore County, MD.

“As of a month ago, I discovered I have PTSD. And part of it comes from my experience with Cru. I kept trying to follow the Bible, and maybe I wasn't good at it in their eyes. I thought it was doing everything right. Before I knew it, they wanted to sit down with me. It was a four-on-one beat down about everything that I was doing wrong and every way that I was outta line. It was just an emotional beat down. And I was bawling. I was numb actually. I was fully triggered and I was shaking. And I think they might have prayed for me. I remember a moment where they realized they were not ready for that ‘cause none of them were equipped to deal with trauma. The two leaders certainly weren't trained or prepared enough for that kind of conversation. I think they maybe prayed over me and there was no follow up.”

Anonymous former Cru student, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY.

“The leaders would praise you a lot for prioritizing the group. So you would get a lot of positive affirmation for being there for making such a sacrifice for the glory of God.”

Gloria Beth Amodeo, former Cru member, Fairleigh Dickinson University, Teaneck, NJ.

"If you do not believe and agree with these things, anybody who believes anything different is going to hell. If you don't believe that, then you can't be in this club. You can't be accepted into this fold the way that you want to be accepted."

Rebecca Carey, former Cru leadership, University of Texas, San Antonio, TX.

“Cru does this thing called discipling where [you and a younger student] meet up every week and go through the foundations of Christianity. It's a really great way to get your roots planted. They agree to that usually. Immediately the week after you would demonstrate what it looks like to do a cold call. You would take them out to the center of campus, you find someone sitting alone, you sit down with them, and as your disciple watches, you walk that person through the Knowing God Personally booklet; you'd engage them with a spiritual conversation.”

Rebecca Carey, former Cru leadership, Fort Worth, TX.

"If your disciple wants to go to Winter Conference but can't afford it, you should offer to pay for them, which is like $300 or $400. I only went to one Winter Conference, 2017. That week, all I ate was the free breakfast because I didn't have any money to go out. And we were at a hotel, so I couldn't cook anything. I didn't have the money for sandwiches or groceries. Once you get there, you're expected to be able to afford a week's worth of meals. There were obvious class issues that no one wanted to address."

Jack Kayhart, former Cru member, Baylor University, Waco, TX.

“You can request to be on a team to go to a specific place. Mine would've been China. started the whole process in February of 2020. After we knew that was not going to happen, the focus shifted to just going to a campus in the United States, which would've been Cornell University. You're supposed to fundraise for $60,000. You'd have to ask everyone you know for funds. And if you don't do that, then they just kind of keep the funds you've raised and then cut ties with you.”

Ashley Robin, former Cru member, San Diego, CA.

“Brady Cone comes out to San Diego every summer. He's their poster child for ex-gay movement. Cru would fly him all over.”

Rev. Fred Harrell, former Cru member, City Church, San Fransciso, CA.

“And then there's just the whole problem of putting 21 year olds on staff. I mean, there was a staff member that was two years older than me, and he was supposed to be my discipler and all this kind of stuff. And, you know, that's not fair to 21 year olds, you know?”

Mike Hughes, former Cru missionary, Turkey

"We had a lot more freedom and took advantage of that. It was like, just grappling with experiencing this new culture, and falling in love with the people that I met and loving that. And I was leading a team, but I rarely would ever actually share the Gospel with people that I met-- even though that's what we were there to do. But it didn't feel right to me. Like, what am I doing? What the f*** am I doing? I'm 20 years old. I don't know anything about life, more than these people I'm surrounded with. And I'm here to convert these people? It just started to seem so asinine."

Tim Thompson, former Cru missionary, London, GBR

"I remember when I went on a small mission trip to London, which is, you know, they just need to hear about Jesus and in London. I put together a prayer letter saying what I'm doing, where I'm going, and then what I needed to raise and then a call to action. Like, if you wanna support, send checks in the mail here. And that's essentially what my parents did on a larger scale for their whole careers. We had prayer letters that they would try to create every month with personal news and updates about the family, because you want them to feel, you want supporters to be invested in the people. And then it's like, what are we doing with the campus? We're working on the campus ministry. And hopefully there's a story of being able to save someone that they can report back to be like, 'Your dollars are well at work, we're saving souls.'"

Rebecca Carey, former Cru missionary, China

“We did a weekend before we left of training. During that weekend we got a crash course in Chinese culture. We were told topics to avoid. We were told to avoid topics about Taiwan and Tiananmen Square. They were like, ‘If you talk to someone who says they're in the Chinese Communist party, just don't continue engaging in conversation with them, just avoid them.’ Because what we were doing was technically illegal. China has laws that prevent people from coming in for the purpose of proselytizing. So we went under the guise of like study abroad with a focus on like the cultural exchange.”

Mel Livermore, former Cru staff, China

“We did a cultural language exchange that allowed us to be in the country. And then just kind of randomly met people on the street to build connections. There's a very specified way of how we were supposed to meet people. I think in that space I realized how colonialism impacts the way that we approach overseas ministry in the sense of like, I have the audacity as this little, 22 year old white person to come in and say, I have the answers to God and all things right here in this little packet. There's so much that could be said about the weirdness of the interpersonal dynamics that happen when you send a bunch of 22 year olds to a random country, isolated and detached from lots of things.”