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You were minding your own business, walking across the quad between classes with homework on your mind and six minutes to get to class. And then you saw the crowd. They were following -- a man dragging a cross? Sure enough, as you moved in for a closer look, you could see a bearded man struggling under the weight of a rough-hewn wocden cross. You could hear the crowd yelling, "Save yourself! You're not my king!" And undemeath it all rose that eerie chant you still can't get out of your mind: "Crucify him!"

A time warp to Calvary? Not exactly, but that's what it felt like one Easter when the InterVarsity students at the University of North Carolina--Chapel Hill staged the crucifixion scene on campus.

Besides the Chapel Hill production, Rich Henderson (then the InterVarsity staff worker) helped students stage this event at Chico State University back in 1986. There students performed in biblical costumes which they borrowed from local church prop-closets. The students were transformmed into armored Roman centurions, a throng of weeping women and Jesus with a aown of thoms.

At Chapel Hill the whole production was modernized: centurions looked like campus security, the women wore shorts, and Jesus' crown was composed of aluminum can tabs. But the events leading up to the crucifixion were carried out as accurately as possible. "At one point, right next to the library, Jesus stumbled, and we actually pulled someone out of the crowd to help him carry the cross," Rich recalls.

At both campuses the mob moved on toward a central quad area. " By the timeJesus got there with his cross and everybody was yelling, there were probably four to five hundred people gathered," says Rich. "A centurion read a proclamation of death. It really looked like they were hammering nails in his hands and feet, and you could just hear the blows of the hammer echoing. Everyone got really quiet when they heard that sound.

"Then they raised him up on the cross, which was a visual image of spiritual truth that I don't think people will ever forget " Jesus remained hanging on the cross for about ten seconds. Then the cross was taken down, and some of the women carried Jesus off.

Many students and faculty were deeply moved by the presentation, which served as publicity for a visit from Cliffe Knechtle, InterVarsity's itinerant evangelist. Rich observes that while the drama doesn't need to precede a visit from Cliffe, the two events did dovetail nicely. "The point of Cliffe being on campus is making the gospel heard, and I think re-enacting the crucifixion really helped do that. For weeks on end we not only heard people talking about the event of the crucifixion, but also about God."

The question of who should portrayJesus was resolved differently on the two campuses. At Chapel Hill, students feared that the person who playedJesus might open himself up to undue harassment later -- so they brought a student with acting ability in from a neighboring campus. At Chico, someone from the chapter portrayed Jesus. Both arrangements worked.

"The overall effect was positive," says Rich. "It got people thinkng about Jesus." Indeed, not only campus newspapers covered the event, but Chico's city paper also made it front-page news. At both universities letters went back and forth about the "crucifixion" in the campus paper over the following week.

"Some people complained that it was really disturbing," Rich remembers. "But after all, the crucifixion is a very disturbing event." At Chapel Hill, some mainline denominational groups expressed offense over the re-enactment of such a holy event, and a Jewish student group charged that crowd members had yelled anti-Semitic comments.

Although Rich did not hear any comments with anti-Semitic overtones, he would caution students to specifically avoid remarks that could be construed as anti-Semitic. A good time to mention this and to set other guidelines, he suggests, is at the training times held beforeband At Chico and Chapel Hill, these times consisted of going over the mob's shouts ("We practiced it so people could get used to hearing those words come out of their mouths"), and rehearsing the drama's pacing and movement. Some of the most dramatic scenes happened spontaneously: "A number of I-V members who planned on being antagonists in the crowd ended up breaking down in tears."

Rich stresses that following campus and city codes is critical. "We made sure we bad the permission of the university and the local authorities. If we ever needed a marching pemmit or a noise permit, we wanted to be legitimate," he says.

Besides lots of practice, the performance "needs to be girded up with a foundation of prayer," Rich emphasizes. He also suggests immediately following up the event with a speaker who explains that the resurrection, like the crucifixion, is a verifiable historical event: "If we were to do it again, we would more strongly communicate that Jesus didn't just hang, but that he was resurrected. Right after they carryJesus away, a couple of students could share what the reality of the resurrection has meant in their lives."

Of course, putting your faith on the line in front of your peers is never easy. "We had some brand new Christians in our group this year who were scared," says Rich. "And frankly, most of us old-timers were scared, too. But afterwards I heard students say that it felt good to take a public stand for Jesus. It built up their faith. And in two or three years, when the next student generation comes around, we'll probably do it again."