180

cults are a pretty big problem in Japan, not just for Japanese people, but for those organizations (like Cru) who could be perceived as a cult to the untrained eye. many cults do similar things to Christian organizations, but they aren't teaching the truth, thus at first glance, they are difficult to distinguish.

while i had become fairly used to this problem in Japan, i did not expect it in Hawaii, much less at our university. unfortunately there is a strong and thriving cult at UH Hilo called "180" and are affiliated with a church called the International Church of Christ, where they believe you must be baptized in THEIR church in order to be saved. they are very active and go up to random people on campus and talk to them and invite them to their Bible studies. unfortunately....we do the same, so it can be confusing to people. they somehow got an article about them in the school newspaper, and after that i had more than few people ask if Cru was the group in the paper. thankfully, since they asked, i was able to explain the difference; however, it was frustrating that people associated our groups with each other. this group also has a history of "poaching"- they would go to other group's meetings, talk to students and try to get them to join 180.

in fact, after Cru started to become more established on campus, they came to one of our meetings. thankfully there were only 3 of them, and there were enough STINTers to keep them occupied and away from our students after the meeting. not sure if it was Kent's message pretty pointedly directed at them, or if they just realized that we knew who they were and were not to be messed with...either way, they never came back. we saw them on campus at least a few times a week, and were friendly (they're friendly too, just have hidden agendas) but yeah, while they remained a concern for the rest of the year, we never really had any other problems with them. even though having them at our meeting put us on edge, it was also kind of flattering to know that they felt we were legit enough/enough of a presence on campus to check out.