By Daniel Silliman – Christianity Today – Paul Eshleman, an evangelism strategist who organized one of the largest outreach efforts of the 20th century so that everyone in the world could hear at least once that God loved them, died on May 24 at age 80.
Eshleman was the director of the Jesus Film Project, producing the 1979 feature for Campus Crusade for Christ (now Cru) in partnership with Warner Bros. and overseeing its translation into more than 2,000 languages. Eshleman arranged for the film to be shown across the world, from places in rural Asia and Africa where people had never seen electric lights before, to national television broadcasts in places like Peru, Cyprus, and Lebanon. According to Cru, nearly 500 million people have indicated they made a decision to accept Jesus as their Lord and Savior after seeing the film.
He joined Campus Crusade in 1966 and went to the University of Wisconsin–Madison. The school was roiled by student antiwar protests targeting Dow Chemical Company, which made the flammable gel the US military was using in the jungles of Vietnam. In 1967, the campus became the scene of what some historians say is the first university protest in the country to turn violent. Eshleman found this was “a wonderful environment for doing ministry,” he said. In one year, he organized 72 evangelistic meetings in dorms, fraternities, and sororities across campus.