Talk:Cru (Christian organization)/Archive 1

General Talk
Am I the only one who thinks that the timeline and statistics page are quite ugly and need wikifying? Also, this article reads like an advertisment, I'm not sure that it's as neutral as it could be. Lankiveil 04:08, July 17, 2005 (UTC).

Link Spam
This article has passed the spam event horizon. The idea of external links is to support the content of the article - links to one or two discussions in the media of the subject of the article are good, a list of links to every single chapter which has a Myspace page is definitely bad (Wikipedia is not a collection of links). It would be good if someone could take a scythe to the list of links on this article. Just zis Guy, you know? [T]/[C] 18:00, 12 February 2006 (UTC)
 * Agreed. Arbustoo has done a really great job with this! Lankiveil 07:12, 18 February 2006 (UTC).

Money magazine quote
The main article mentions that Money Magazine rated Campus Crusade for Christ the most efficient ministry. I did a web search on "money magazine" and "campus crusade for christ" and couldn't find the original article, or even a decent chunk of it, from scanning the first 50 results. The closest I came was one brief reference that said the rating was in the Nov 1996 issue. If someone has access to this issue and can verify the date and perhaps get more of the quote, that would make the article stronger. --Zippy 06:27, 8 November 2005 (UTC)


 * On further review, the quotes that I found on line claiming this appear to come from the Campus Crusade for Christ's press kit (that is, they are the identical very short quote, which would be surprising if they came from the original article and not from the press kit).


 * Given that the quote in this Wikipedia article doesn't include any context (most efficient in what way? compared how?) I am removing it from the article until someone can pull the original and enough context to make it meaningful. --Zippy 07:14, 22 November 2005 (UTC)


 * The quote is a reference to the percentage of donated funds that goes to support actual ministry workers and activities, versus being used up in administration (marketing, accounting, etc.). CCC has one of the lowest overheads of any ministry or charity -- perhaps the lowest of any large ministry or charity organization -- due to very streamlined, efficient processes in handling donated funds.Gandalf2000 04:08, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

Money Magazine listed Campus Crusade high on their list of charities, based on efficency, more than once. I have a copy of the article from thier December, 1993, issue. The article starts on page 128, and details about Campus Crusade (as first place) and the other top-five religious organizations listed that year appears on page 135. I cannot find that issue on line, but it is almost 15 years old now. Markww 11:45, 25 January 2006 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the reference. Would you be willing to type in a quotation from this original article? I think that the context would make this claim much stronger. --Zippy 23:22, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

On page 134 of the December 1993 issue of Money magazine, in the section about Christian groups, the second sentence reads: "The most efficent religious group, Campus Crusade for Christ International, which spends an average of 84% of its income on programs, has long since moved from college out into the world." It then goes on to describe Campus Crusade's growing number of outreaches and staff members. (While this is a quote from a copyrighted source, I trust quoting this one sentence falls within the realm ot fair use.) Markww 00:42, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
 * Yes, that would be fair use. Feel free to add it, thanks,--Gandalf2000 21:33, 2 February 2006 (UTC)


 * Thank you for doing the research on this, Markww. --Zippy 07:04, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

Statistics for "JESUS" translation
Someone has added "Originator, distributor, and translator of JESUS, the most widely translated film in history (more than 900 languages)". The 900 was originally 800. I cannot find any citations or reference for these figures, so I can't argue about their accuracy, but it seems a bit optimistic for me. Can someone help verify this? Lankiveil 13:16, 27 February 2006 (UTC).

http://www.jesusfilm.org/progress/translations.html has up-to-date statistics on the number of completed translations: 939 as of March 2. The work is proceeding at a rather quick pace, so the number is bound to change often. --GregViers 21:51, 2 March 2006 (UTC)


 * A lot of those just look like dialects ("Standard Arabic" and "Standard Arabic with Egyptian Accent"?). Perhaps the article should say "900+ languages and dialects"? Lankiveil 05:16, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

General Update
So like a year ago this page really sucked and was disorganized and I tried to clean it up, later finding about a billion random links posted and complete chaos. Thanks to all who helped clean it up again. Before anyone throws up a huge slew of information/links or, in the opposite fashion, deletes a whole collection of information/links, it would do everyone well to explain what you're about to do so a huge battle doesn't erupt. This page has been flagged for quite some time now. This is one of the biggest Christian ministries in the world and thus will have many supporters and many critics so instead of pretending that views are always neutral on this ministry giant, let's try to be concise and somewhat academic in the presentation of information. For now it looks like it has calmed down a bit which is good. I tried to clean up the links section again...it bugs me when there are like 10 different formatting styles!!! Allright I'm done. Yarman March 19, 2006