CoJourner - What's in a Name?

So you’re wondering where the name CoJourner came from? Here is a little (personal) history lesson.

In 2002, the top strategic priority for Campus Crusade for Christ’s national evangelism efforts (that is, for the US campus ministry) was student evangelism. What had become apparent to me was that students didn’t like the way we talked about evangelism (and I don’t blame them.) Our training was very “how-to” oriented, which left one with the (mistaken) impression that evangelism was primary what I did and how I did it, rather than what God was doing and how I become a part of it.

After a bunch of research looking at various evangelism models and paradigms, I hadn’t found much that I thought fit the US college student. While on a personal writing retreat (back in Nebraska, a state whose welcome sign rightly identifies it with “The Good Life”), I began to consider the options. A lot of the literature used the biblical analogy of sowing and reaping (often adding other elements like cultivating, even keeping.) This, of course, is biblically sound and can be effective. The only problem is that most of our students aren’t agricultural and none are ancient. Today’s farmers use tractors, planters and combines. (Hmm…not quite the same picture as sowers and reapers.)

So I began to wonder if there was an equally biblical analogy for evangelism that would resonate with the hearts of today’s students. My mind locked onto (I trust with divine inspiration) the idea of spiritual journey. What if you thought of evangelism through the lens of spiritual journey?

Creative juices began to flow and I wrote the first prototype of a training session – one that I would use in a local church a couple of weeks later. I didn’t know what to call it at the time, so I used the title “Traveling Together.” It was later that fall, after the four roles had crystallized (Explorer, Guide, Builder and Mentor) that I realized, English doesn’t have a good word for traveling together (companion maybe be the best, not but a great title for evangelism equipping.) But what if you combined the prefix “co” (together or with) and with the root for journey—“CoJourner”? Hmm… It worked for me. Others seemed to resonate (though one of my sons still hates it.) After trying it out among student groups, it caught on. In fact, one campus bought the domain name to use for their local group before I ever got around to it.

Now you know the rest of the story. Stay tuned. In a few weeks a new CoJourner website will go live where you can get the ever-expanding and improving family of resources.