Presbyterians lead strong national campus ministries The Layman Online Tuesday, August 3, 1999 During the controversy over the National Network of Presbyterian College Women, church leaders paid scant attention to two independent national campus ministries that are led by Presbyterians and have had a powerful impact on the lives of students involved in the ministries. The ministries are InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, whose president is Presbyterian minister Stephen A. Hayner, and Campus Crusade for Christ International, whose president and co-founder is Dr. Bill Bright, a member of First Presbyterian Church in Orlando, Fla. More than 60,000 weekly Together, InterVarsity and Campus Crusade attract more than 60,000 college students to weekly Bible studies and evangelical meetings. Both groups are unabashedly evangelical. The National Network of Presbyterian College Women, which received probationary approval from the General Assembly to continue as a campus organization, has a handful of women active in a few campus chapters but claims a data base of 650 nationally. Prior to the 1999 General Assembly's mandate that its resources reflect Biblical and Reformed theology, the Network had operated as a radical feminist group with resources that recommended ReImagining God theology, lesbianism and overturning the denomination's constitutional ordination standard. The 1999 General Assembly required a major theological overhaul and annual reviews for three years. Meanwhile, InterVarsity and Campus Crusade have made dramatic impact on campuses throughout the United States and in several foreign countries. $43-million ministry InterVarsity is a $43-million campus ministry that reaches more than 30,000 students on a weekly basis. More than three-fourths of its funding comes from contributions. Nearly $10 million comes from book and media sales. Its books are among the most popular in evangelical publishing. Campus Crusade has staff and student leaders on more than 550 campuses in the United States, serving nearly 25,000 students on a weekly basis. Affirming Christian doctrine Both organizations have adopted evangelical statements affirming classical Christian doctrine. "Everything that InterVarsity does has the goal of developing gifted and faithful servants whose greatest desire is to reach the campus with the gospel of Jesus Christ," Hayner says in a letter published on the IV web site. In a letter on the Campus Crusade web site, Bright emphasizes the ministry's commitment to continue evangelism. "We as a staff, together with many millions of Christians whom we have helped train, have already taken the gospel to more than one billion people during the past forty years -- tens of millions have indicated their desire to receive and follow Christ … It is our prayerful objective to help take the gospel to over six billion by the year 2,000 with at least one billion receiving Christ and one million churches being planted."

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