Craig Johring
I was raised on a farm/ranch north of O’Neill, Nebraska. When I was 12 years old I committed my life to Jesus Christ and was baptized at the First Christian Church in O’Neill. I have no memory of every missing a Sunday at our church or a Wednesday night Bible study. When the church doors were open my father finished milking the cows and we were always at church. I have carried the faith of my parents with me throughout my life and have never departed from the evangelical faith of my parents that I was raised with.
I wanted to be a missionary to take the gospel the people in the world who did not know Jesus. I attended a Bible College to prepare me for a life of missions. Bible College was not for me. After a year I left the Bible college to pursue an agriculture degree. I graduated with degrees from Northeast Community College and from Kearney State College. After graduation I attended a Campus Crusade for Christ Summer Project in Japan. My heart for captivated by the people who I met who were far from Christ. I left behind my future career in business to become a missionary with Campus Crusade for Christ.
My heat has always been to bring the gospel to people who are far from Christ and have no opportunity to know Christ. At the University of Wisconsin-LaCrosse I would sit in the dorms of students on cases of beer to explain how they could know Christ personally. Several years later I returned to Nebraska to serve with Campus Crusade at the University of Nebraska at Kearney.
At Kearney I continued taking the gospel into places where Christ was not known. Each year I spoke to the practice fields to athletes, and meet individually with those interested in hearing more. I started a ministry in the fraternities and sororities. I lead Bibles studies in the fraternities house. One of the fraternities wanted me to work close with them. They gave gave me the title of an initiated member of their fraternity. After that time the door to each person in the fraternity was open for me to step into their lives. The impact with the guys who were students at that time continues today.