Sharing My Story

One of the major things about Campus Crusade during that
period was a sense of big ideas and big goals. Dr. Bill Bright
often said that small plans do not inflame the hearts of men.
Dr Bright thought big and continued to believe God for big
goals throughout his life. His goal was to see the Great Commission
fulfilled within this generation. The Great Commission as he defined
it Biblically was to have everyone on earth have an opportunity
to clearly hear the Christian message and be able to respond to it.
Bill Bright and the CCC leadership prayerfully decided to qualify
the "our generation" within a very specific time frame. The completion
of the Great Commission in the United States was set for 1976 and
the world by 1980.

This were audicous goals and goals that could only be
fulfilled with Divine blessing and enablement. As mentioned
previously the primary Campus Crusade witnessing/discipleship
strategy was based on the cell or small group multiplication concept.
This concept was Biblically based and was used by Christ himself
with the disciples and the early Church. One of the texts that was
used a great deal during that time was the book Master Plan for
Evangelism. The basic idea was members of small groups
(action groups on campus) who form their own groups from
individuals who they had lead to Christ. These groups served
as training and teaching centers for the members who would
then share Christ and start their own groups from those who
responded to the gospel and desired to become disciples.

In order to jumb start this discipleship process which was
working well on college and university campus and begin
the process of meeting the above Great Commission goals
strong emphasis was placed on the International Student
Congress of Evangelism or Explo '72 which would be held
in Dallas, Texas in June 12-17, 1972. Much of my first year
on Campus Crusade staff centered around in one way or
another around getting ready for Explo '72.

Explo was seen as a catalysis for seeing the cell or group
discipleship plan implemented on a national and international
basis. Perhaps the major difficulty that i saw with the total
literal fulfillment of this plan was the number of
language/dialect groups in the world that did not have any
scripture translated into their languages (or even a written
language to read) and the years it takes to construct a written
language (and teach the people to read) and translate the
scriptures into those languages. However even with those
issues in mind I commited myself as a CCC staff member
to see the Great Commission fulfilled as much as possible
within an early time frame.