It Ain't Bill Bright's Cru Anymore

Cru’s Woke Drift and the Battle Over Its Mission

Hey everyone, welcome to the Conversations That Matter podcast. My name is John Harris. I may be doing this podcast in different locations over the next few weeks depending on where I am and what kind of setup is available to me.

Right now I'm actually staying at my parents' house and I'm in their dining room and it's kind of late right now so most of the house is in bed and so I have a little time to do a short podcast on Cru.

We've done a few videos about this last week and what's going on just to bring everyone up to speed. Cru has been going woke over the last few years really since Cru 15, their staff conference. They were promoting social justice at Cru 17 and Cru 19.

Many of you know I went through a lot of the Cru 19 videos. That was a conference I watched just about every main session for and man, that was a lot. A lot of social justice, not a lot of gospel. I think only one speaker I found actually shared even a rudimentary gospel.

But anyway, all that to say there's been a battle within Cru and there was a group of concerned staff members who decided to go to the leadership with their concerns. They compiled a document that expressed their concerns.

This was not received all that well. The group was asked to disband essentially but then that document was leaked by progressives. Not by the folks in the concerned group but by I guess a mole who had according to a staff member who came out recently who had been part of the group and they leaked it and so now it's out there.

Where we're at right now is the Lenses Institute which was one part of Cru. They decided to shut down their North American or their United States, I'm trying to remember now. I think it's North American office.

They're going to leave it open in other countries but in the United States at least and I think in North America, they're deciding to shut it down and they're kind of acting like an underdog. I did some videos on this.

I'm like, are they really the underdog? They're like so persecuted and Cru is against them. It's a tactic that is often used by the social justice side when they're not in any kind of imminent danger or if they're just limited just a little bit, they act like they're being persecuted and there's all these powerful forces that are against them because they stand for justice or something.

It's a manipulative tactic especially for Americans. Americans love an underdog. They tend to be very compassionate people and anyone would be bullied or persecuted. That's a horrible thing and so they portray themselves that way in their own narrative.

This is kind of bringing us up to where we are now. I just wanted to share a few things. I wanted to ask this question first. What is Cru? What are they? Are they an organization for the spread of the gospel, fulfilling the great commission, discipleship or are they a political organization?

Right now Cru is such a big organization, it's probably a mix. Depending on where you are in Cru, you may not know that there's a whole lot of social justice stuff going on in other places. That's all you may be hearing.

This is really a problem for leadership because there's some crazy stories that are going out there. I've shared some of them. One of them, the craziest one I think, was a Cru staff member who reached out to me and said they were told to go to an art exhibit on homosexual art.

It was raunchy. They were not allowed to evangelize, they were just supposed to get to know gay culture. This was part of their training as Cru staff. There's crazy things like that going on but then there's other people in different local ministries who just don't know about any of this.

How widespread is it? I do know it's very widespread. Now Cru is huge though so I don't know what percentage to put on it. But if their staff conferences are any indication about where the organization is headed, it's been very bad.

Overwhelmingly focused on social justice, hardly any gospel content. I wanted to share with you just a few things. One is, I had shared this screenshot in one of the videos last week. It's from a Cru staff member I'm assuming.

They characterized me, and they spelled my name wrong, as a nationalistic racist heretic. I laughed at that a little bit because I just thought it was someone who spelled my name wrong too calling me these things.

It's meaningless. It's all emotion. It's just no attempt to back any of this up. How am I a heretic? Racist? That word means nothing anymore. It means you're an evil man because we don't like you. It's pretty much what it means.

It doesn't actually describe anything anymore. Nationalistic? How? In what sense am I nationalistic? In the sense that I love my country or what? I wanted to talk about Bill Bright a little bit who founded Cru and how he might be described by social justice advocates inside Cru, the kind of social justice advocates who might have said this about me.

Why focus on this? Why bring this up again? I got an email from someone who worked with Bill Bright back in the day. They have a son, I guess, who attended Cru. I'm going to leave some of this out just because I don't want to identify this person, but I'll read for you part of the letter I received or the message.

This person says their son was in a Cru Bible study some years ago. There was a Lenz's board member who was part of it. They went super woke. This person sent this Lenz's leader a book which I had recommended, Social Justice Versus Biblical Justice by E. Calvin Beisner.

He was not happy with that. This Lenz's leader, a Cru Lenz's leader, said, she says, I received a scathing reply not interacting with the material but with the author. This is a tactic, guys. You got to realize it and you got to dismiss it every time you hear it.

That author is fill in the blank. Deal with the argument. Deal with the material presented. This is a way they get away with not ever dealing with what they say or do because they always go ad hominem just about in every circumstance.

It's lazy. It's not interesting. It doesn't move anyone any direction. All it does is enhance the flames that are already burning in this controversy. It doesn't actually get you anywhere. It needs to just be ignored.

Who cares? What if the author really was a horrible person? Are some of the things they said true? I really think that's where we need to focus. I'm not saying that the views of a particular author don't have an impact sometimes on what an author says.

At this point, that's not what they're trying to do. They're not trying to say, well, here's where this person has a view that is evil and it winds up in their material. What they're trying to do is just without reading the book, without really any kind of logical interaction with it, dismiss the whole thing.

They're not going to the book to show you where the incorrect ideas are. It's just attack the man. It's just ad hominem. Here's what happens with E. Calvin Beisner. This person wasn't happy with it, received a scathing reply.

He's a nationalistic racist heretic. That's what they say about E. Calvin Beisner, this lens's leader. This person who wrote me this letter says the exact words, it's the same words they used about me.

He says the author was also anti-mask, pro-Trump, and pro-General Lee, as is John Harris, spelling my name the same way. This person's against E. Calvin Beisner, against me, and using the same exact verbiage.

This is what this person who works with Bill Bright concluded. She said, I think they have a memo out on you. He proceeded to say, if I didn't apologize for sending him such devastating material, he never wanted to have contact with me again.

There's no interest in actually moving the discussion forward. There's no interest in humility and being corrected if you're wrong. There's no interest in, if other people are wrong, giving them the opportunity to be corrected.

It is demonization. That's all it is. This is the way revolutionaries talk, and this needs to be denounced in the strongest possible terms. It's not how Christians act. You can't have a country when people act this way about each other.

Bill Bright’s Views on Robert E. Lee, America, and Communism

I wanted to just briefly show you, here is Bill Bright, the founder of Campus Crusade for Christ, now CRU. I want to show you some of the things that he said about, first, General Lee, General Robert E. Lee.

This is Bill Bright in a book on, let's see, I should have the title of the book here. It's in chapter five of whatever book it was. You can probably go look at it easily online at Google Books. Anyway, here are the words of Bill Bright in a book he wrote, and I wish I would have put the title of it, but it's, Revere the Lord's Name as the Name of the Chapter, Commandment 3.

After the American Civil War, the managers of the infamous Louisiana Lottery approached former Confederate General Robert E. Lee and asked if he would let them use his name in their scheme. They promised that if he did, he would become rich.

Lee, a devout follower of Christ, straightened up, buttoned his gray coat, and shouted, Gentlemen, I lost my home in the war. I lost my fortune in the war. I lost everything except my name. My name is not for sale, and if you fellows don't get out of here, I'll break this crutch over your heads.

Misusing someone's name is always wrong. Have you ever asked? So he goes and uses it as an illustration. Bill Bright using General Lee as a positive illustration in one of his books. So I wonder what the Lenz's thinks of Bill Bright, the founder of their organization.

How about this, Bill Bright on America, and by the way, this took me less than five minutes to find these quotes. I'm sure there's a whole bunch more. The Ten Commandments, he says, and this is a book on how to understand the Bible.

The Ten Commandments and all of God's laws are like the granite monuments. They are unchangeable, written in the stone of God's standards. I know that God's laws are the only way that America will survive, yet Americans are turning their backs on the standards that make their country great and moral.

Sounds like he wants to make America great, huh? Here's another quote. If America insists on being the major exporter of pornography, the major importer of drugs, and promotes immoral degeneracy, she will pay a price.

God cannot tolerate us further, as someone once said. Unless God chastens America, he will have to apologize to Sodom and Gomorrah. So why is he so concerned about America? And by the way, he's not mentioning racism there.

He's not mentioning the things that social justice warriors are so concerned about. He's mentioning drugs and immoral degeneracy, pornography, these kinds of things. Not very in step with the times, but he has a concern for America.

And here's what he said about communism. A careful examination of the community strategy to capture the college campuses of America reveals that it is happening here. If America is to remain free, or if America is to regain her strength morally and spiritually, it will be because individually we have become awakened to our dependence upon Christ.

Bill Bright was very much part of the moral majority stuff, or at least the religious rights stuff. Bill Bright was very much part of, when he started out Campus Crusade, wanting to scale back communism on the college campuses.

He loved this country. He was very patriotic. This is the man who started the organization that Lenz is part of. And that the social justice warriors who have taken over Crewe are part of. And the weak-kneed people in the leadership of Crewe are part of.

And none of that reflects any part of Bill Bright. In fact, they're demonizing people who think like Bill Bright. Calvin Beisner, myself. At least, maybe we're not in lockstep on everything, but on some of these basic things, they would say the same things about Bill Bright that they're saying about me.

And the same things about Calvin Beisner and whoever else. And this is very telling. This is not Bill Bright's Campus Crusade any longer if this is the kind of thing that is acceptable in the organization.

Joe Ludwinkowski’s Resignation from Cru Military

Now, I wanted to share with you something. This is fascinating. And this takes a lot of bravery, I think, in some ways. This is excellent, though. This is an absolutely excellent whistleblower video by Joe Ludwinkowski.

Joe Ludwinkowski was the executive director of Crewe Military as of two and a half weeks ago. And him and two others who were part of that organization resigned. And he made a video and talked about it.

And I want you to listen to what he has to say. Here he is. Hello, friends. Joe Ludwinkowski here.

I'd like to tell you a story. It's the story of our experience as your leaders during the past seven years. Lydia and I believe that this may be helpful to you since our resignation letter has taken most of you by surprise.

And it appears that our decision was spur of the moment. Nothing could be further from the truth. For seven years, we've contended for military ministry within the broader organization. We've sought to emphasize the uniqueness of the global military community and how military ministry is uniquely positioned to reach the members of the military.

In addition, we've fought for emphasizing the verbal proclamation of the gospel. And we've tried to be an advocate for military ministry as a unique, standalone ministry. Since Crewe 15, I've written every senior Crewe leader expressing my concerns about our staff conferences, the emergence of critical race theory as a guiding philosophy within Crewe, and about what I've seen as a departure from our original mission and vision.

I've tried to be a voice against philosophical changes I've observed in Crewe. I've argued against teachings based on critical race theory being included in new staff orientation and IBS and SLI, multiple letters without one official reply.

This culminated recently in a letter signed by General Oster's, Abel, and myself to the chairman of the CCCI board of directors on May 10th. We were writing as executive directors who were responsible for stewarding the ministry for over half of its lifetime.

And we clearly, using very direct language, expressed our concerns about the direction of Crewe and our lack of faith in its leaders. We asked to be allowed to stand alone as a ministry and to report directly to the board.

Again, without an official reply. After waiting for two months and with no one else to appeal to, Lydia and I decided to resign and write our letter to you. As we see it, this was the culmination of seven years of being marginalized.

To be clear, our letter is our letter. No one on the senior leader team had any part in writing or sending it. As a matter of fact, they were very upset and very against our sending it. While we love them and appreciate their input, we are on our own road and we are remaining true to the course the Lord set for us since Crewe 15.

We see our resignation as our final step of obedience. Please understand that your military ministry leaders are in a tough spot. They did not write the letter, but they have to live with the fallout from it.

Pray for them and encourage them. Let them know where you stand on these issues. Make your voice heard so that they can effectively lead. The surprise and shock of our letter has created was inevitable.

For seven years, we deliberately did not share what was going on behind the scenes. We were hopeful that we would prevail and that we would be able to operate in accordance with our founder's vision all the way up until the end.

We had hoped that we'd be allowed to stay in the transition out over the next six months. But after meeting with Mark Gothier and an HR representative from Crewe on June 30th, that was no longer an option.

We are currently praying through our future. One thing we do know is that we will continue to be a voice against critical race theory, against the notion of wokeness, against the social gospel, against any racism, and all other liberal ideologies.

We believe that our experience can help other leaders who are trying to do the same thing. We would ask that you do two things. First, read the Seeking Clarity and Unity document that I have linked to this email.

It is very well written and it gives you all the information you need to know to understand where Crewe is as an organization. Second, we would ask that you pray and ask the Lord what your personal response should be.

These are important times. The fate of military ministry depends on staff members and their ministry partners to make their opinions known. We must all take a stand on these issues. There is no middle ground.

Lydia and I are at peace believing that we've been faithful to the Lord and to the vision of the leaders who established this ministry over 50 years ago. Bill and Vonnette Bright, Jack and Barbara Fane, giants of the faith.

Without them, military ministry would not exist. Lydia and I are no longer on staff with Crewe. And although the bylaws of the executive committee allows former executive directors to remain on as part of the EXCOMM for life, we are not being allowed that option.

So it looks like our time with you has come to an end. We cherish the time that we did have with you and will always be thankful for the part we were allowed to play in the movement to take the gospel to the global military community.

It has been a highlight of our lives. Now it's time for you to write your part of the Mill Men story. We love you. God bless you. And God bless military ministry.

A Warning, an Encouragement, and a Call to Courage

That was powerful stuff. And there's part of me that wishes a bunch of people would have come forward with these videos a few years ago when there was probably still a chance. And I'm not just talking about Crewe.

I'm talking about just in general. This movement has gone so fast. But look, if you're in an organization, maybe consider doing something like this. I mean, his tone is excellent. You can tell he cares.

But he is trying to warn people about what's happening in the organization. And the more videos like this come out, the harder it is for people within Crewe, especially in leadership, to prove to donors that they're not going woke.

Because clearly they are. Clearly that this is what's going on in Crewe on a mass scale. So I wanted to bring that to your attention. This is just following up some of the Crewe stuff from last week. I hope we don't have to talk about Crewe a whole lot more.

But I did want to update you on that since I've been covering it here and there. More coming this week. I think the podcast will be a little sporadic with all my travels and everything. But I want to try to bring you podcasts when I can as often as I can.

And for your encouragement. I hope the Monday motivation video was helpful to you. I'm encouraged that even though there's a lot of negative things going on, there's a lot of people waking up. There's a lot of people realizing what's happening.

And the Lord is always on the move. He's always going to use those who are in Him to do His will when they submit to Him. And they're open to that. So be open to it. Be open to serving Him wherever you are.

And love the people around you. That's an important thing. To love those who are closest to you. Love those in your community. And be willing to sacrifice for them if need be. I think if more people were like that and willing to risk their reputations, we wouldn't be in the predicament we're in.

But we can always start now. So go out, spread the gospel, and be brave. And that's all I've got for you today. Hope that was helpful. God bless.