Amazing Faith by Michael Richardson

Author:Michael Richardson [Richardson, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-56511-2
Publisher: The Crown Publishing Group
Published: 2011-08-24T00:00:00+00:00

This list served as a manifesto on evangelism and discipleship—and as a call to action only months before Crusade would burst upon the world stage with global strategies and huge events unlike anything Bill had ever before undertaken.

CHAPTER 20

Bill Bright, CEO

Another new face on the Crusade leadership team—and one who would provide fresh insight in organizational development at this crucial period—was that of Steve Douglass, a graduate of the Harvard Business School and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Douglass promptly demonstrated such skills that Art DeMoss asked Bill for permission to recruit him as president of a DeMoss company. But Steve decided the challenge wasn’t big enough; he had caught the vision of seeking to create worldwide change through the Crusade movement. He would more than prove his value to Bill, who as CEO of what was now a burgeoning enterprise had to keep his eyes on the law, taxes, and financial management as well as on ministry goals.

On the way to becoming Bill’s right-hand man, Steve was learning what it was like to relate to a visionary who also happened to be a perfectionist. One day at Arrowhead Springs they were discussing strategies to reach the world. They happened to be standing next to a window overlooking the beautifully landscaped grounds. Suddenly Bill said, “See that brown spot out there. You need to get that green right away.”

“Uh, yes sir, sure. What brown spot?”

Sure enough, more than a hundred yards away, Bill had spied a patch of only a few square feet where the sprinklers missed the grass.

Such was Bill’s way, and it became part of the Crusade culture: Everyone cares about the little things as well as the big things. Attention to detail pays off.

At Harvard, Douglass and his colleagues had studied hundreds of companies undergoing growth and had identified the patterns and stages of development they went through. Steve and three associates chose to analyze the organization of Campus Crusade and make recommendations. The request reflected one of Bill’s strengths—and weaknesses: He often invited new thinking from the best and brightest and the latest person to drop by. It contributed to his own intellectual vitality but occasionally drove his staff and leadership team daffy. For Bill, other people offered a valuable source of ideas, manifesting his own faith that the Holy Spirit of God could, day by day, lead him into new ways of witnessing to the Truth.

So Douglass and his team analyzed Crusade. After nearly twenty years of existence, Crusade had student ministries in about forty countries and on three hundred campuses in the United States. Other unique ministries were focused on laypersons, the military, high-school students, and athletes. The ministry staff had been growing approximately 30 percent each year.

In their report, Steve’s team noted that the ministry was growing much more rapidly than most secular organizations, and they identified growing pains associated with such expansion. They targeted three areas for possible change: more decentralization of functions, more coordination of these functions on a geographical basis, and more management talent at a lower level.

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