One of the hinges of my history has to be my encounter with Campus Crusade. That era will figure into anything I write or leave behind regarding my three decades of editorial cartoons. In the midst of that span I had more than one breath-taking plunge on the roller coaster, the most devastating of which was having to shut down my public relations and advertising service, Ministry of Ideas, and bury my dream of spending my life helping churches and religious organizations communicate the gospel in a more effective manner. Little did I know that within two years, that "failure" would lead me to become vice president of Mayes International, Inc., where my presence helped cinch a fund-raising contract with Campus Crusade for Christ.
I'll write more about how that came about in a later post. But what brings it to mind today is an email from a friend who quoted from a devotional by Crusade's founder, the late Dr. Bill Bright. What caught my eye was not the forwarded email (frankly, I delete most of those, especially when the subject line says "Fwd: Fwd: Fwd."). What captured -- and thrilled me -- was the summary comment tagged onto the end of his devotional. It was a current update on Campus Crusade's work around the world:
"The late Dr. Bill Bright was Founder and President/Chairman Emeritus of Campus Crusade for Christ, an organization which began as a campus ministry in 1951 and now has more than 27,000 full-time staff and up to 500,000 trained volunteer staff in 196 countries in areas representing 99.6 percent of the world's population. In the past 50 years, Campus Crusade for Christ has seen approximately 6 billion exposures to the gospel worldwide. The film, "JESUS," which Bright conceived and funded through Campus Crusade for Christ, is the most widely translated and viewed film of any type ever produced. Since its use began in 1980, the film has been translated into 839 languages and viewed or listened to by over 5.7 billion people in 228 countries. Dr. Bright was also the author of more than fifty books. Dr. Bright recently co-founded Global Pastors Network to "Touch, Teach and Train" a group of 5 million new house churches around the world"
That nearly complete saturation of the world with the gospel was a dream when I got the account, became editor of the campaign plan for "a hundred-million-dollar first phase of a billion-dollar campaign to get the gospel into every country on earth." I think the staff total was something under 3,000 at the time.
My role in that campaign was a life-changing experience for me. It would take the rest of my life to tell all the stories. But the most satisfying, the most fulfilling, the most gratifying, is that the "JESUS" film was conceived as a key element of our case statement for the fund-raising campaign. That case statement, a nine-month project spearheaded by Steve Douglass, then Crusade's Executive VP, who served as coordinator, and four members of Crusade's planning team, all of whom had Ivy League MBA's.
In the course of the campaign, film producer John Heyman came to Bill requesting prayer for his dream of presenting a powerful film presentation of Jesus that would merit a significant play in commercial theaters. Try as he would, he could find no one who would risk the kind of money it would take to create a film of competitive commercial quality.
Bill came to me and said, "Doug, is there any way that we could justify using some of our campaign funds to produce such a film?"
"Bill!" I answered. "That is dead center on one of the key elements of our case statement! It is exactly what we described was needed for our 'village strategy' that is so critical to reaching the huge masses that are functionally illiterate." (Our plan team defined 'village' as any population center less than 200,000; and, as I remember, that encompassed about 68 percent of the world's population at the time. I'll try to confirm all these figures later.)
As it happened, Dr. Joe Mayes, founder and owner of Mayes International, had a strong interest in how movie financing with limited partnerships worked. And he was an expert of course in organizing and operating non-profit corporations. He set up the mechanism. We challenged Nelson Bunker Hunt, chairman of our campaign's International Executive Committee, to designate about $6 million of his initial campaign pledge to finance the creation of the film.
One of the key provisions of the arrangement gave Campus Crusade the world-wide rights to the film after it had its commercial theater run.
The thing that none of us could foresee is that which gave the "JESUS" film its explosive global distribution -- the worldwide acceptance of VCR technology, the Internet, and DVDs. In the campaign case statement, we had to assume a strategy that involved two teams working in tandem: one advance team to go to population centers and plan an event, followed by a projection team to actually show the film and set up a plan of follow-up discipleship. Both teams were to use three-wheel motorcycles, projectors were to be kerosene-powered, and projection was to be on foldable screens that, if necessary, could be hung from trees.
We knew what needed to be done. We just didn't know all the wonderful tools God was preparing to speed us on our way.
You can read much more about the "JESUS" film at http://www.jesusfilm.org/.
I'd like to add the story of how I got involved in helping my sis, Doris (Mrs. Marshall) Edwards, an ESL specialist, who created "Window on the World," a 13-week ESL curriculum that uses episodes of the "JESUS" film as its "text." Or maybe this is already more than you wanted to know. Pardon my exhuberance over how God honored our day-by-day search for His will and how far it has gone in thirty years.
The sad thing is that it could have happened much more quickly. In 1976, when I first became involved, Bill's consuming goal was specifically stated to get the gospel into every country on earth by 1980. That's why we went for a billion. That's why I built the campaign plan on a motivation of urgency. That's why we spent almost two years "under the radar" sharpening the axe before even announcing the campaign.
But that's another story. I might tell it later. Stay tuned.
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