Bill Bright

William Rohl Bright was born on October 19, 1921, in Coweta, Oklahoma, on a ranch where his family raised cattle. He grew up during the Depression and learned the value of hard work. He studied at Northeastern State College in Oklahoma and went to California in 1946 to enter business. He started a company that made candy and fruit confections, which prospered. He was a young man of promise with a growing income and bright prospects.

While in Los Angeles he began to attend Hollywood Presbyterian Church, where he came under the teaching of Henrietta Mears, a remarkable Christian educator. She challenged the young people to give their lives to Christ and to the cause of the gospel. Bill committed himself to the Lord in 1944. In 1948 he married Vonette Zachary, who shared his dedication to Christ. Together they wrote a contract in which they gave themselves to be slaves of Jesus Christ.

In 1951, while studying at Fuller Theological Seminary, Bright felt that God was calling him to reach university students with the gospel. He believed that if the campuses could be won, they would shape the future of nations. He left his candy business and began work at the University of California, Los Angeles. This was the start of Campus Crusade for Christ. He and Vonette invited students to their home, and many came to hear about Jesus. He taught them how to share their faith with others.

In 1952 he wrote a short booklet called the Four Spiritual Laws, which set out the gospel in simple steps. It was widely used, and tens of millions of copies were printed in many languages. He believed that every Christian should be trained to share the good news clearly. Campus Crusade grew quickly and spread to universities across the nation and across the world. It also developed ministries for families, athletes, business people, military personnel and the poor.

In 1972 he led Explo 72 in Dallas, a gathering of more than eighty thousand young people for training in evangelism. In 1979 his organization produced the Jesus film, a screen version of the Gospel of Luke, which has been translated into more than a thousand languages and viewed by billions. It is among the most widely seen films in history. He also led a movement of prayer and fasting for revival and worked to bring Christians together across denominations.

He was not without critics. Some thought his methods were too standardized or too focused on the mechanics of evangelism. Others felt that his organization was too closely tied to political causes. He also faced questions about the way the ministry was run, and some of those who worked under him found him strong-willed. In his later years he took an interest in many causes, and he sometimes pursued projects that went beyond what the ministry could carry. He accepted correction and admitted failures.

In 1996 he received the Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion, worth over a million dollars, and gave the money to the cause of fasting and prayer. He suffered from pulmonary fibrosis in his last years. He died on July 19, 2003, in Orlando, Florida, at the age of eighty-one. His life shows what one man can do who gives himself without reserve to a single task. The movement that he started has reached more people with the gospel than perhaps any other organization of his century.