EQUIPPING BELIEVERS

TRAINING LAYPEOPLE 

SD: What does CCC do to help laypeople in the Church grow and become involved in the Great Commission?

BB: Well, in the early 60's, a group of laymen came to me and said, why and how are you seeing so much fruit on the college campus, because we were seeing thousands of students come to Christ, and we're not seeing it in our churches? We don’t see evangelism in our churches. We want to lead people to Christ, but we don't know how.

So, I started speaking in major cities. Every Saturday I would speak for seven or eight hours and thousands of people would come and I would train them in the spiritual life how to share their faith, et cetera and that led to what we called our Lay Institutes of Evangelism where we would bring people together for a week for training, and that led to some incredible things that played a major role in developing leaders all over the world.

WOMEN IN MINISTRY 

SD: What does Campus Crusade for Christ think about women in ministry? What kind of roles can women have in the ministry?

BB: Steve, you and I are so fortunate. God has given us incredible wives and together you and Judy are going to make an impact, and have already, on the whole world. I believe under your leadership and Judy's involvement you're going to help set a standard for the staff and for other movements that will be unprecedented and I'm praying to that end.

Women have always played an important role in this movement. We hire men only if their wives are qualified and we put them through the same basic training because they're partners.

We won't even hire men to take responsibility in the movement unless their wives also qualify and they go through the same basic training, and yet of course when the children come along they have responsibilities in the home. Their allegiance should be to God first, both the husband and wife, then their spouse, then to the children and then to the ministry.

SD: In essence, Bill, you're saying as a matter of stewardship if nothing else, we need to absolutely give the best possible opportunities to women.

BB: The greatest untapped source of influence and power for reaching the world for Christ is women, and I think of the three greatest influences of my life; my mother, Vonette, Dr. Henrietta Mears have all been women. And you think of who has the greatest influence on children, the wife or the father generally. The wife, she's more with the children. And who influences the family next door? The wife, and so it goes. But somehow women who have been in bondage through the centuries. Actually, long before Jesus came, women were just chattels and he liberated them. He even revealed Himself to women before any of the disciples. So, women were of great worth to Jesus, but through the centuries, women have been more discouraged in being involved in their Christian activity. So, in Crusade it's very important that women be given responsibilities, and I think we can do a better job than we've done, but I'm encouraging all with whom I have any influence to do everything they can to maximize the world of women to help make this movement even more effective for the glory of God.

THE FOUR SPIRITUAL LAWS 

SD: Bill, you've written many, many books and booklets. I've lost count at 50 and I know it's probably nearing a hundred by now.

BB: I was told at the office the other day in different books and booklets over a hundred.

SD: Over a hundred.

BB: Yes.

SD: One of them was the Gold Medallion award winning book, Witnessing Without Fear. Another of these publications happens to be a booklet is The Four Spiritual Laws. Could you tell us a little about why you wrote The Four Spiritual Laws?

BB: Well, actually it was in 1955, if I remember correctly, at UCLA we were training our staff and I invited a man who was an expert sales consultant. He trained salesmen how to sell. He received a very generous figure traveling the world teaching corporate leaders how to do their thing, and he was a Christian and a friend. So, I asked him to come and speak to our staff. He said you can't be successful unless you have a pitch. Everybody has a pitch.

SD: Did he use the word pitch?

BB: Yeah, he used the pitch word.

SD: Oh, that was real offensive.

BB: I recoiled. I reacted. I don't have a pitch, you know when I witness the Holy Spirit speaks through me.

SD: It's all fresh.

BB: So, I was offended by what he said. After he left he made reference to some of my friends, Dr. Henrietta Mears and Dr. Richard Halverson, they were very wonderful people and dear friends, how they had a pitch. They always said the same thing to everybody no matter what their problem. And he said Bill Bright has a pitch, but he didn't even know me that well, and he said he works with students and he works with people on skid row and he works with the executives, and I know he tells them all the same thing. Well, I was really embarrassed. So, when he left I was licking my wounds. My inflated ego, because I was really self centered in that moment. I wasn't really walking in the spirit.

SD: You already admitted it insulted you; right?

BB: He didn't mean to. It was my stupidity. I took it the wrong way. Anyway, that afternoon I went alone and I said, Lord tell me is there something you want to say to me, and he made it very clear. I did say the same basic thing when I was talking to an executive or a student or people on skid row. I told them about the love of God. I told them about how Christ died for our sins. He was raised from the dead and how they can receive Him into their lives. Well, I sat that afternoon and wrote what we called God's Plan for Your Life, and I asked all of our staff to memorize it. Well, it revolutionized our ministry. People would have maybe one out of twenty five witnessing experiences where they'd see one out of 25 receive the Lord. Now we'd see one out of three or four.

SD: Oh, my goodness. That's a dramatic increase.

BB: Well, yes, because they were giving them something concrete, something specific. The average person, including myself, just had never been trained how to share my faith. See, they don't do that at most theological seminaries. Five years, I love my professors, I love the schools, but they didn't teach me how to witness and I just kind of learned by self-observation and so I wrote it out. It revolutionized our ministry, and that little God's Plan then was outlined with God's Four Spiritual Laws.

SD: And when was that, by the way, that you came up with The Four Spiritual Laws?

BB: I'm trying to remember 19…

SD: Was it '65?

BB: I think it was sooner than that, but what I used to do is ask the staff to write out the Four Spiritual Laws on the back of what we called The Van Deusen Letter. I wrote the letter to a very prominent businessman who was not a believer and he didn't receive Christ, but he gave me an idea. So, I took that letter which I wrote him, changed the name to Van Deusen, Dr. Van Deusen, which sounded kind of distinguished.

SD: A little higher class, yes.

BB: And printed the content of the letter and it proved to be one of the most powerful evangelistic tools we'd ever prepared, and then I would ask the staff to write on the back of the Van Deusen Letter, The Four Spiritual Laws.

SD: Which would summarize then the letter.

BB: God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life. And I remember when I was writing it out late one night I had started out with man is sinful and separated from God and thus he cannot know God's love and plan. The second law was God loves you. Well, the Holy Spirit impressed me to change that to start with God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life and the second law, man is sinful and separated from God, and the third law, Jesus Christ is God's only provision for man's sin, and the fourth law is we must individually receive Jesus Christ as our Savior then we can know God's love and plan. Well I think just the changing of those two laws with the emphasis on God's love revolutionized The Four Spiritual Laws.

THE JESUS FILM 

SD: Bill, another tool that’s been very effective is the Jesus Film. That didn't come out until 1979, but you had a vision for some kind of a film for a long time, didn't you? What is the background on that?

BB: As a new baby Christian 1945 I really got excited about Jesus. I looked around me in this wonderful church where the gospel was preached and the Bible was taught and a lot of wonderful people, but most of us didn't do that much. I was busy because I was selected to be the president of the college and post college group, about 700 to a thousand people, and I was heading up deputation, about 120 people going out to the jails and skid row missions. For five years I worked with that group, but I looked around me and the average member of the church was not witnessing, and I was talking to one of the pastors one day and he said out of 65 hundred members, he added up all the elders and all the deacons and all the ushers and all the Sunday school teachers and I believe he said there were 285 people who had jobs. The rest just sat and soaked and soured.

SD: Had jobs in the church?

BB: Yes. So, in the course of events, God impressed me to do a film on the life of Jesus.

So, Cecil B. DeMille was alive and I went to hear him lecture in a church and he gave his Christian witness. Told how he came to Hollywood to produce Christian films, and as you know he did King of Kings, that great classic and The Ten Commandments and other incredible films, and said if he had the money he would do nothing but produce Christian films, but we looked at every film that had ever been produced on the life of Jesus in Hollywood, trying to find something already done that would meet our conditions, our standards, but we couldn’t find anything. And further more, as Crusade was born I at one point thought perhaps God wanted me to finance it from my business, and then God gave me the vision for Crusade and our funds were invested in getting Crusade going.

And then as you remember in board meeting after board meeting we'd talk about doing a film on the life of Jesus.

SD: I do remember that.

BB: And then one day, 33 years I've traced it back, after God gave me the vision, He arranged to have Bunker and Caroline Hunt at Arrowhead Springs and John Heyman, a Jewish movie producer who had produced I believe 48 different feature lengths, and he had a project called Genesis Project. He wanted to do the whole Bible on film, and of course I shared with all three of them my dream of having a film on the life of Jesus, and Bunker turned to Caroline and said, "Caroline, what would you think if we would underwrite that film?" And Caroline had a beautiful southern accent. She said, "Oh, Bunker, I think that'd be wonderful."

SD: And it was wonderful.

BB: So, that was Saturday. Monday the money was released and the rest is history, and God used John Heyman to produce it.

SD: Bill, why has the Jesus Film been such a powerful instrument in evangelism?

BB: All I can answer is the grace of God. It is the word of God, the gospel of Luke, no other content except the Bible and God honors His word, but I think it's also because the staff around the world have rallied under Paul Eshleman's leadership and developed a strategy to take the gospel to everybody on planet earth and we've pretty well succeeded in reaching a large percentage and it's just God's doing. It'd be foolish for me to say, look what we've done.

SD: Well, for sure. Right. God has a habit of using His word and given it's portrayed in a way that people even who can't read can understand it to see how that has an impact on people's hearts.

BB: Can you imagine hundreds of millions, and probably a billion or more have -- probably a couple of billion -- have viewed the film for the first time in their own language.

SD: Yes, nothing else maybe is in their language, nothing like that. Bill, give us statistics as of June 8th, 2001, today, what are the statistics on the Jesus Film?

BB: Well, the latest report that has come to me is that the Jesus Film has been viewed by over four billion, that's a "b", 4,300,000 in 660 languages in every country of the world. I believe 234 countries and provinces, and of course we have every reason to believe on the basis of what we know hundreds of millions have indicated salvation decisions, but only God knows. But anyway to Him be all the glory.

SD: Other than that it just hasn't gone anywhere.

BB: Can you imagine the major contender for the number of translations of any film in history is Gone with the Wind and I believe it had 35 translations.

SD: That's right. That's right. Not a fraction. That's right.
 

BACK TO INTERVIEW PAGE