Billy Graham once said of this man:

He has carried a burden on his heart as few men that I’ve ever known – a burden for the evangelization of the world. 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.

He was referring to Bill Bright.

Born 1921 into an Oklahoma family, Bright described himself as being a “happy pagan” in his youth. While in his early 20s he moved to Los Angeles, California and founded a company called Bright’s California Confections. In 1944, while attending Hollywood Presbyterian Church, Bill attended a Sunday School class taught by Henrietta Meers. Soon after, Bill gave his life to Jesus Christ.

At about the same time Bill met Vonette. She was finishing graduate work in the field of education at cross-town rival University of Southern California. While Bill began intensive Biblical studies which led him to graduate studies in Pasadena at Fuller Theological Seminary, Vonette taught in the LA school district.

It was while he was a student at Fuller that Bill felt the call of God to help fulfill Christ’s Great Commission by sharing his faith with students at UCLA. This gave birth to the Campus Crusade for Christ. Fueled by his passion to present the love and claims of Jesus Christ to “every living person on earth,” Bill and Vonette spent more than five decades building and leading the Orlando, Florida-based Campus Crusade for Christ.

As the world’s largest Christian ministry, Campus Crusade for Christ
serves people in 191 countries through a staff of 27,000 full-time
employees and more than 225,000 trained volunteers working in some
60 niche ministries and projects ranging from military ministry to inner
city ministry.

Bill was so motivated by the Great Commission, Jesus’s command to carry the gospel throughout the world, that in 1956 he wrote a booklet titled The Four Spiritual Laws, which has been printed in some 200 languages and distributed to more than 2.5 billion people, making it the most widely disseminated religious booklet in history. He wrote more than 100 books and booklets, and thousands of articles and pamphlets that have been distributed in most major languages by the millions.

In 1979, Bill commissioned the JESUS film, a feature-length documentary on the life of Christ, which has since been viewed by more than 5.1 billion people in 234 countries and has become the most widely viewed, as well as most widely translated, film in history.

In 1983, Bill chaired the National Committee for the National Year of the Bible. He was named the 1996 recipient of the $1.1 million Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion. He donated the prize money to causes promoting the spiritual benefits of fasting and prayer. Vonette founded and led the National Day of Prayer and today leads the Bright Media Foundation.

Bill went home to Jesus in 2003 and is survived by his wife Vonette, 2 sons, and four grandchildren.

The men of 2007 honor Bill Bright for his love of Jesus, his joyous pursuit of personal evangelism and disciple-making, and his passion to see people become fruit bearing, replicating followers of Jesus.

Stand in the Gap 2007
Washington, D.C.
October 6, 2007