Somebody irritated Carlton Cartwright Jr.

"For you to look at me and say you don't see that I'm darker than you," the Salisbury State University senior explains, "that's like saying, 'Carlton, you don't look 6 feet tall. You look 5 feet.' That's taking away something that is me. I am 6 feet 1 inch--you can't make me 5 feet--and I am brown, so don't try to not see that."

Carlton was responding to the phrase "color blind"--once a buzzword in race relations, but no longer. Today, America's new word is contextualization. Instead of overlooking racial differences, this social philosophy honors and develops these distinctions. And Campus Crusade for Christ applies the philosophy to ministry with ethnic college students.

On Carlton's campus, for example, students can choose from two Campus Crusade meetings, the most obvious distinction between the groups being skin color. "The only way to fully understand this is to go visit a church of another ethnicity," says Charles Gilmer, national director for InterCultural Resources (ICR), "and ask yourself, 'If this was my first and only exposure to the gospel, would I hear it clearly?'" (ICR trains students and staff members to reach ethnic students in a culturally relevant manner.)

"It's really messy, but that's what it takes in many cases," admits David Perkins, a staff member with ICR who coaches volunteers to lead Campus Crusade groups on college campuses. And that's what it took for Larry Paige, who transferred his senior year to Salisbury State University from University of Maryland, Baltimore County. While at the University of Maryland, the 200-pound weightlifter had started a Christian fellowship among African Americans. After transferring to Salisbury State, he heard about a Christian meeting and walked across campus to check it out. The setting made him uncomfortable.

"I looked in and saw not one black face, and said, 'There is no way I'm going in there,'" Larry remembers. Several SSU students coaxed him into starting an African-American group there, which he did, partnering with Campus Crusade at the invitation of staff member Charlie Klepadlo. Larry's group, FOCUS (Fellowship Of Christians United in Study), represented "separate and equal."

"We don't exclude anybody from FOCUS," says Evette Jones, an SSU senior and Larry's successor as leader. "We all have unique needs within racial groups. It's just more effective sometimes if you have people of the same race ministering to each other."

"Students are welcome at either meeting," clarifies Charlie, "but people will naturally go where they are most comfortable."

Arguably, the two Campus Crusade groups aren't much different from each other. They meet the same night, several hundred yards apart. Both meetings include singing (a cappella at FOCUS, accompanied by instruments at the other), and both groups teach a biblical message. "When the Word is put forth," says Evette, "you notice the contrast."

Carmon Strickland says that contrast matters. "The first attraction [to FOCUS] is the way Larry comes across straight and uses slang," the coed explains.

No one can argue with FOCUS' effectiveness. Thomas "Butch" Strong, a senior, says that since joining the group, his grades improved from a C to an A average. "I have more faith in the Lord, and it's been evident in my books and the way I've been living," Butch says. "Before I'm studying, I'm praying. And before the test, I'm praying."

Billy Smith, a sophomore, also changed. "Before I came here I was a big party person," he says, chewing a plastic straw, his long legs crammed beneath a table in the student-union snack lounge. "Since coming to college, I got involved in FOCUS. At first, I didn't know how to read the Bible. Now, I am learning how to analyze it and apply it to my life."

Billy claims to read his Bible two or three times every day, something Larry models. "If somebody told me there was a million dollars in this dorm room, I'm gonna turn this room upside down," suggests Larry. "That's how you gotta look when you're going to the Word."

On average, 40 African-American students attended FOCUS weekly last semester, representing at least 10 percent of the African-American population at SSU. Students also regularly visited from University of Maryland, Eastern Shore, a historically black campus. "When they go back, even if they go back to a predominantly black campus," says Larry, "that vision's been impregnated. Then they can create a carbon copy."

But not everyone's convinced the idea is worth copying.

"We would be so much stronger if both groups came together," says Veena Narang, a student in Campus Crusade's other group, Student Impact. "The Bible calls us to be an army of God, but how can we be strong if we are divided?"

The Rev. Eugene Rivers, a minister to inner-city Boston who favors contextualization, addressed this in an interview with Christianity Today, February 5, 1996. "Progressive modern evangelicals confuse reconciliation with integration. . . . We ended up accepting the view that everything had to be salt and pepper for it to be equal and godly. . . .We don't have to be together around everything to be reconciled."

The faculty advisor for Student Impact agrees. "I don't expect both groups to fuse into one, and I don't think they should," says Ed Wong, Ph.D., a biology professor at SSU. "Yes, we are all united in Christ. And yet there is a place for these ethnic-specific outreaches or fellowship groups, because it is easier to communicate within your own racial or cultural circles."

"I do have to commend Larry," says junior Brian Bronson, president of the local NAACP. "He did a very good job of bringing the African-American community on this campus to Christ."

Larry's not new to ministry. "I remember leading brothers to Christ in the bathroom stalls in elementary school," he says smiling. His teachers nicknamed him "Christian," and later, during a short stint in the Army, people called him "Preacher."

Larry attributes remaining spiritually rooted to his mom. As a single mother, she put her son through Christian middle and high schools. Her photograph hangs at the center of a photo collage above Larry's desk, a tribute to the lasting impression she's made on his life.

And though Larry finished classes last semester, he's left a lasting impression too. "Without help from people like Larry, there's no way that a group like Campus Crusade for Christ, with limited relationships in the African-American body of Christ, would know how to reach out to African-American students," says Charlie Klepadlo. "Larry is a part of the fabric of a revival that God wants to cause in this area."

That "fabric of revival" is multi-colored, just like the body of Christ. And just like at SSU, each thread must be woven in, one color at a time.