South African Evangelist Michael Cassidy is Fuller's Alum of the Year

Michael Cassidy, founder of evangelism organization African Enterprise, was honored at the annual Festival of Beginnings chapel service as Fuller’s Distinguished Alumnus of 2012.

Cassidy, who lives in South Africa, was in Pasadena to celebrate his 50^th class reunion and to receive the award, which he said was a humbling experience.

“I was completely overwhelmed and I felt completely undeserving, because I know so many of the things my other classmates have done,” Cassidy said of his feelings when he first heard of the award.

But it was also “a great affirmation,” he said, of the work he had done since graduating from Fuller in the 1960s.

Born in Johannesburg and educated at Michaelhouse, Cambridge University and Fuller Seminary, Cassidy went on to facilitate conversations that promoted reconciliation and political change in South Africa, which culminated in peaceful first democratic elections in South Africa in 1994.

He also conducted many missions across Africa and around the world and was recently named honorary chairman of the Lausanne Movement for World Evangelisation, succeeding John Stott, the massively influential evangelist who helped define the global evangelical movement in the 20^th century.

Cassidy said his experience at Fuller Seminary has stayed with him throughout his life and ministry.

“It was a determinative experience and a completely formative time in my life,” he said, noting that it was here that he learned the basics of evangelical and biblical faith.

Cassidy credits Fuller for teaching him how to work out the “horizontal dimensions of the gospel” in society and to the neighbor – lessons he believes gave him the framework to work on apartheid and bring the gospel not just to hearts and minds, but also to political and institutional structures.

His evangelism ministry, African Enterprise, which operates in 10 countries in Africa, is a “child of Fuller,” Cassidy said. He started the organization while still a seminary student with the help of Charles E. Fuller himself.

As he would tell it, Cassidy had first felt the call to do city evangelism in Africa, while at a Billy Graham Crusade in New York in 1957. When he got to Fuller, he knew he wanted to start something, but had relegated this dream to after graduation. A classmate, knowing Cassidy’s aspirations, encouraged him to start the work right away. Cassidy considered it, but wasn’t quite convicted yet. Until one day, Charles Fuller called.

“[Fuller] said he felt an unusual leading to help some students,” Cassidy recalled. Fuller then gave the young Cassidy full use of his personal offices and secretarial staff, gave him a list of names of knowledgeable people to be on the board of his organization and helped him to get listed as a non-profit.

It was this experience that gave Cassidy the confidence that God was leading.

Several Fuller professors also left a lasting impression on Cassidy, who credited Edward John Carnell for showing him the “possibility to hold truly biblical and evangelical faith without negative, pejorative and narrow outworkings”; Geoffrey Bromiley for bringing an understanding of church history and the implications for the modern church; and Clarence Roddy, his homiletics professor, who Cassidy vividly remembers would always passionately exclaim, “Preach the Word!”

Cassidy’s ministry has included preaching, teaching and writing. His newest book – a decades long passion project on John 17 called “The Church Jesus Prayed For” – will be published in England in November and will be released in the U.S. in January.

“I’d be surprised if other than my memoirs, I ever write anything that will be more of a legacy statement of my own theological understandings than this book on the church Jesus prayed for,” Cassidy said.

And lately, Cassidy has felt a passion for mentoring younger leaders. When asked what words of wisdom he could impart to current Fuller students, Cassidy had this to offer: “The first is to deepen constantly in your own personal and private devotional life, because if you sustain a regular devotional life and an ordered system of prayer and Bible reading, you are going to be hooking up to the Lord. That’s the biggest thing because you’re meant to be a man or woman of God.”

And when that spiritual, personal life with Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit has been cultivated, “Seek out what is God’s primary will for your life and seek it out until you get it,” Cassidy urged.

“The thing I would covet for all Fuller Seminary students is to find God’s will for their lives and to press on through it until they’ve found it. When you’ve found his will and you’ve found your place in the kingdom, then your gifts can be used to maximum effect.”