Presbyterian who founded Campus Crusade dies at 81
By John H. Adams, The Layman Online, July 21, 2003
Dr. Bill Bright, 81, a Presbyterian who founded the world’s largest ministry of evangelism, died Saturday in Orlando after a long bout with pulmonary fibrosis.
Bill BrightBright began Campus Crusade for Christ International in 1951, soon after his conversion from being a “happy pagan,” and served as the ministry’s president for 50 years. His plan was to “win the campus today and change the world tomorrow.”
He made enormous inroads.
Two of the ministry’s primary tools of evangelism – Bright’s booklet titled The Four Spiritual Laws and Campus Crusade’s Jesus Film – have been presented to millions of people around the globe. The film alone is believed to have prompted more than 1.2 million decisions for Christ. Both the pamphlet and the film have been presented in more than 700 languages.
Today, Campus Crusade has an annual budget of more than $450 million, 25,520 full-time staff and 226,200 trained volunteers worldwide serving on campuses and in community-based ministries in 190 countries.
Bright’s top salary as head of the international ministry was $50,000, not including housing. Royalties from his 50 books went directly into the ministry.
Bright, a member of First Presbyterian Church in Orlando, was one of two Presbyterians who simultaneously headed two of the largest and most effective evangelical campus ministries in the nation.
The other is Stephen A. Hayner, a Presbyterian minister who served for 13 years as the eighth president of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. In 2001, Hayner left InterVarsity to become Peachtree associate professor of evangelism and church growth at Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, Ga.
Due to his failing health, Bright’s public appearances had declined in recent years. Tethered to an oxygen tank, he made one of them in 2001 to speak to Presbyterians attending the evangelical Gathering sponsored by the Presbyterian Coalition at First Presbyterian Church in Orlando – just a few days after he had preached at a citywide revival.
At the Gathering, Bright briefly summed up his testimony: “An agnostic and humanist as a youth, when I met Jesus, I fell in love with him. My wife [Vonette] and I signed a contract 51 years ago to be his slaves. We are the slaves and the master gets all the glory. If we show the world how great he is and how wonderful he is, I believe we will see the greatest spiritual harvest the world has ever known.”
The Rev. Howard Edington, then the senior pastor of the 5,500-member Orlando congregation, expressed dismay that the Presbyterian Church (USA) had failed to give Bright the honor he was due. “One of the things that has troubled me is that here is a great Presbyterian and our denomination has either ignored or ridiculed Dr. Bright,” Edington said.
Edington asked ministers whose decision to enter the ministry had been influenced by Dr. Bright to stand. Dozens did.
Bright’s purposeful campus ministry was markedly different from the campus ministries sponsored by the Presbyterian Church (USA). In contrast to such Presbyterian campus groups as the National Network of Presbyterian College Women – a group that was almost extinguished because of its emphasis on lesbianism and radical feminism – Campus Crusade unabashedly introduced students to Jesus Christ and an orthodox faith.
“He has carried a burden on his heart as few men that I’ve ever known – a burden for the evangelization of the world,” evangelist Billy Graham, a close friend, said a few years ago. “He is a man whose sincerity and integrity and devotion to our Lord have been an inspiration and a blessing to me ever since the early days of my ministry.”
“With quiet dynamism, the diminutive, self-effacing Christian leader overcame his abhorrence of approaching strangers with the Gospel, leading Campus Crusade to a pre-eminent position in the religious world, respected across a broad spectrum of denominations,” Orlando Sentinel writer Mark I. Pinsky said in a story posted on the Sentinel Web site.
Bright did win worldwide recognition and support. In 1996, he was awarded the international Templeton Prize in Religion, which was established by Sir John Templeton, a former director of the Presbyterian Lay Committee.
He used his acceptance speech, which was delivered at the Church of St. Maria in Trastevere in Rome, to give an expanded version of his testimony. He closed with an invitation: “I urge all in reach of this message to join with us – to humble ourselves before our almighty, loving, holy God and Father, to fast and pray, to seek His face, to ask Him for a great worldwide spiritual awakening, and to join with me and millions of other believers in the most exciting, incredibly fulfilling, rich and rewarding experience the human spirit can ever know – and that is to help fulfill the Great Commission of our Lord, sharing God’s love and forgiveness with every person on planet Earth, and at the earliest possible date.”
Lloyd Lunceford, a former director of the Presbyterian Lay Committee who heads the appellate practice section of a Baton Rouge law firm, served on the staff of Campus Crusade for Christ at the University of Georgia in the late 1970s.
“The practical experience I gained helping others think about the great issues of life made me a more effective church member,” Lunceford said. “And I have always appreciated Dr. Bright’s balanced approach of taking the initiative and sharing the gospel, but leaving the results up to a sovereign God.”
The Brights have two grown sons: Zachary, who is pastor of Divine Savior Presbyterian Church in California, and Brad, a staff member of Campus Crusade for Christ and director of the Pinnacle Forum, a ministry to world leaders.