Despite Illness, Bill Bright Still Expands Ministry

WASHINGTON, March 28 (RNS) -- Though he now has only half his normal lung capacity, Campus Crusade for Christ International President Bill Bright is still planning how his already wide-ranging ministry can expand its evangelical message across the world.

Diagnosed last fall with pulmonary fibrosis and already battling prostate cancer, the co-founder of the 50-year-old ministry is editing books, preparing video presentations and making plans to foster the training of future Christian leaders through a university housed at New York's Empire State Building.

His illness has slowed his physical pace, but it has not diminished his faith, Bright said in a telephone interview from Arrowhead Springs, Campus Crusade's former headquarters in San Bernardino, Calif.

"I'm rejoicing and praising and giving thanks to the Lord because he is so wonderful," said Bright, 79. "I've learned that life and death are not that much different and, you know, to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord so a Christian can't lose."

Bright's attitude has buoyed his staffers as they adjust to the fact that their longtime leader is ailing.

"His attitude is so consistent and refreshing that it's hard to be sad around him," said Crawford Loritts, associate director of Campus Crusade USA.

Bright, the 1996 winner of the Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion, is being honored this year by his fellow evangelicals.

The Evangelical Christian Publishers Association is scheduled to give him its Gold Medallion Lifetime Achievement Award in July. The National Association of Evangelicals chose him for its first-ever Lifetime Ministry Award earlier this month. Bishop Kevin Mannoia, NAE president, said Bright maintained his faithful focus when he informed him that his health would not permit him to make the association's annual meeting in Dallas.

"The amazing thing about Dr. Bright is that in whatever circumstance he's in, he's always ready to pray, to be interested in the mission of the church and to literally verbalize the ongoing joy of his personal walk with Christ," Mannoia said.

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