Soularium – Story from Marshall
28 04 2008Tony Arnold sent us this…
At Marshall last Wednesday & Thursday (4/23-4/24/2008), the staff set up a Soularium event in the main plaza on campus. They posted the photos on a tri-fold display.
Every year staff member Gerhard Esterhuizen cultivates a relationship with the student newspaper reporter who has the assignment beat for organizations like Crusade. This year the reporter is of Middle Eastern descent (Muslim father).
Gerhard called the reporter the weekend before the event and did a phone interview with him.
The day before the event the school paper ran a feature about the “survey”. (Btw – they called it a survey, but Soularium is really a dialogue or conversation, not a survey. Oh well, we’ll keep working to clarify that.) It explained Soularium in positive terms with good quotes using language that would connect with non-believers.
Gerhard writes: the article… definitely fit into our promotional strategy of Chalking and putting up posters. You can’t explain Soularium on a poster or with chalking, but through (the) article you can really explain Soularium to the campus.
Soularium turned out well….. All day long people would come and look at the pictures and we would do the survey with them. Students on campus enjoyed it because it was really creative and valued their opinion. Our students found it real easy to get into spiritual conversations. Over two days we probably did around 50 surveys and were able to get into significant spiritual conversations with almost everyone.
Gerhard had at least 2 special opportunities using Soularium.
One student he led through Knowing God Personally indicated he would pray that evening. (I’ll let you know if I hear more from Gerhard.)
Another student had written very negative articles about Crusade 4 years ago. He went through Soularium and “changed his perspective of Crusade and the ministry. It was a PR win.”
Here is the story:
