Gettysburg SP

First-Ever Gettysburg Summer Project

By David Preston

The purpose of the Gettysburg Summer Project was to equip students to be spiritual leaders and to share the gospel through storytelling.

The first week we studied biblical leadership in the context of battlefield leadership, drawing on the examples on the battlefields of Gettysburg. The second week se studied stories of faith during the Civil War. Our 5 Military Ministry staff and 7 students were able to dress in Civil War attire and share the stories of faith of the Christian Commission agents thousands of times at the museum, on the streets, at the monuments, and at the 145th Gettysburg Reenactment. We not only shared stories of faith, we also passed out 10,000 trading cards with stories of faith that led the reader to a website (<http://www.faithatgettysburg.com> ) to read more about the gospel message. So far, over 1446 people have visited the website and 128 have visited the gospel pages.

We spent four days at the reenactment site. There were about 18,000 re-enactors and hundreds of thousands of tourists. We set up a Christian Commission reenactment camp just beside the battlefield. Thousands of tourists came through our camp where we were able to engage them about stories of faith during the Civil War. We told them stories about men and women who gave everything to share the gospel to the soldiers.

During the third week, we trained the students how to use what they learned to return to their campus to have an impact for Christ. We introduced them to a tool that uses pictures to engage in spiritual conversations. The students then went into town and engaged with people using a deck of pictures and questions. Two of the students talked to a couple of high school aged boys on their front porch. They talked about life, dreams, and the difficulties of life. The conversation moved to the love of Christ for them and both boys trusted Christ. What a great way to end our time together.
The students wrote about their experiences on the project everyday on another website. If you want to really see what the project was like with pictures, visit…<http://www.faithatgettysburg.wordpress.com>