Cru Celebrates 75 Years of Reaching Students for Jesus
In 1951, a former businessman-turned-theologian decided to start telling students at UCLA about Jesus. Bill Bright, with his wife, Vonette, shared God’s love with the people around them, and those students in turn did the same for others.
Cru missionaries return to a single question that has guided the ministry since 1951
Seventy-five years later, this same model operates in 190 countries, carried forward by more than 16,000 team members. This year, Cru is marking its 75th anniversary, and the ministry says the story behind its growth is simpler than the numbers suggest. Cru missionaries return to a single question that has guided the ministry since 1951: Did the person who met Jesus through Cru go on to introduce someone else to him?
This question also shapes who leads the organization. Many of Cru’s current staff and volunteers came to faith through the ministry, and they are the ones carrying the same relational approach into a significantly different world from the one the Brights started. David Robbins, who became Cru’s president in July 2024 after two decades on staff, is one of them.
“What began in the hearts of Bill and Vonette Bright has been carried through generations of people who have chosen to keep Jesus as their first love and make him known,” said Robbins, who first encountered Cru at the University of Mississippi. “That’s the thread that has held everything together. And it’s the thread we dare not lose.”
The tools have changed several times over. Cru has reached people through print, film, campus meetings, social media and now virtual reality spaces. The focus on relationships remains steady — a campus staff member meeting a student for coffee, a volunteer answering questions in an online group, a missionary talking with someone about faith inside a virtual reality chat server. Different setting, same conversation.
Cru’s growth now spans a family of ministries that did not exist in its early decades. Athletes in Action works with athletes and coaches. FamilyLife focuses on marriage and family discipleship. Jesus Film Project translates and distributes film versions of the Gospel. Unto serves people facing poverty and humanitarian needs. City-focused teams carry the same relational approach into urban neighborhoods.
Cru staff have also spent recent years reaching people through video games and other online spaces, treating those platforms the way earlier generations of staff treated a dorm lounge or a quad, meeting people wherever they are. While Cru continues to innovate its ministry strategies to deepen its impact in a rapidly changing world, Robbins said Year 76 will start the way Year 1 did: Find the next person, walk with them and point them to Jesus.
Learn more about Cru’s ministry in the Kansas City area at Cru in Kansas City.
–Alan Goforth | Metro Voice
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