Twenty-five years ago last summer, as a carefree college kid from Michigan, I hopped on a bus bound for New Hampshire. People I met along the way asked what I'd be doing for the summer, but I didn't really know. All I could say was, "I'm joining one of Campus Crusade for Christ's summer beach projects."

When I'd first heard about the idea, during a conference held over the Christmas holidays, it had sounded like fun: travel to an East Coast beach resort, get a job, and in my spare time talk to people on the beach about Jesus. And besides, it had to be better than another summer working in a factory.

As it turned out, the first thing I did was get a job . . . in a factory. And the summer was more than "fun"; it changed my life. I returned to college for my junior year with one deep conviction: God wanted to use me to help reach Michigan Tech with the gospel.

"Summer projects act as a greenhouse for students," says Craig Domeck, director of U.S. projects. "They are crucial to our mission of turning lost students into Christ-centered laborers." Craig goes on to point out several components of projects that lead to a life-changing summer:

1. Focused growth: Students get more attention from a staff member in six weeks than during the entire school year. As Wayne Wilkins, director of Campus Crusade at Florida State University, puts it, "A summer on a project is equivalent to a year's growth on campus."

2. A sense of community: Young people today desire community, and a project models a Christian community. Participants work together, live together, hurt together, do everything together. This teaches them to have healthy relationships and leads to peer pressure in a positive sense—students are challenged to do things in ministry they wouldn't normally do, such as explain the gospel to strangers on the beach.

3. Leadership development: During the first part of the summer, staff members mentor students and train them. At the halfway point, all staff members leave, and the students take total responsibility for running the project.

4. Equipping for ministry: On some projects, as many as 25 percent of the students have been believers less than a year. During the project they gain confidence in telling others about their faith.

It's not only project members who become Christ-centered laborers. During my summer in New Hampshire, each of us attended a local church. At one church, project members met Sharon, a local high-school girl. Sharon felt drawn to students on the project and began hanging around the beach house where we lived. During the course of the summer she came to have a living faith in Christ. Years later she got involved with Campus Crusade in college, and ultimately joined the ministry full time, even going to Africa as a missionary. Today, Sharon Stone is a pastor's wife in Florida.

Summer projects began in 1967, in Ocean City, NJ. Over the years projects have been established at many prominent beaches, as well as mountain resorts like Lake Tahoe and the Ozark Mountains. And in the last decade or so international projects have enabled students to help plant new campus ministries in different parts of the world.

This past summer 2,246 students traveled to 27 locations stateside and 60 overseas. In this special section, we'd like to give you a flavor of what those projects were like. As you read these articles, we trust God will change your life, too, in some significant way.

Just as He changed mine. During my summer in New Hampshire, I learned not only how to tell people about Jesus, but also some of the principles Jesus used in training his disciples. I went back to college and asked God to give me some guys to "disciple" in this same way. He did, and in time those men began training others too, using the same principles I'd learned on the beach project.

God used the movement launched through those men to radically affect my school. Christianity became an issue on campus, to the point that the year after I graduated, the Michigan Tech alumni magazine commented that you could hardly even go to a hockey game without hearing somebody talking about Jesus.

As you read this, you can be sure that somewhere, maybe even in your own church, college students are considering whether or not to go on a summer project next year. Tell them to go. They'll never be the same again.

Plus it sure beats working in a factory—at home, at least.