Dr. Bill Bright, founder of Campus Crusade for Christ, was asked this very question when he received the Templeton Prize for religious advancement.
Bill and Vonette Bright started Campus Crusade in 1951 with the vision of reaching the college campus today to reach the world tomorrow. Dr. Bright was a businessman and had a strong internal motivation, but even so, he and Vonette knew that the vision they had would only be accomplished by God. Therefore they immediately started to bathe the ministry in prayer. They divided each day into 96 segments of 15 minutes each and recruited people to commit to pray (see Global Prayer Movements’ August 2009 newsletter).
With this as the back drop, when Dr. Bright was offered the award of a million dollars, he did not take to money for himself; he did not use it to feed the programs of Campus Crusade, even the Jesus Film was left out; and he did not give it to the poor. While each of these would have been acceptable, Dr. Bright, fully convinced of the power of prayer, used it to educate leaders of the church worldwide to the spiritual benefits of fasting and prayer (see Chuck Colson’s article).