ORLANDO, Fla. -- Campus Crusade for Christ founder Bill Bright died July 19 following a battle with pulmonary fibrosis. He was 81.

Bright had been ill with the debilitating lung ailment for three years and in recent interviews said he did not fear his approaching death, the Orlando Sentinel reported.

"I'm looking forward to being with the Lord," the newspaper quoted him as saying after he was diagnosed.

Bright's wife and ministry partner, Vonette, sent an e-mail letter to ministry members and supporters on July 10, telling them her husband's health had taken a turn for the worse.

"I feel secure, protected, loved and at times so joyful for Bill that he will be with Jesus," she wrote.

Family members surrounded Bright when he died, the newspaper reported. A memorial service is being planned in Orlando.

"Bill Bright was -- by any standard -- one of the greatest Christian leaders of the modern era," said the Rev. Howard Edington, former pastor of First Presbyterian Church of Orlando, where the Brights were members. "Yet I have found to my great admiration that he was one of the most genuinely humble men I have ever known."

Bright sold a successful food business and an Oklahoma oil-drilling business to start Campus Crusade for Christ in 1951. Today, the ministry has an annual budget of $450 million, a full-time staff of more than 26,000 and more than 225,000 trained volunteers, the newspaper reported.

Campus Crusade spread beyond colleges to prisons, the military, families and the inner city. Bright wrote a single religious tract, "The Four Spiritual Laws," that has a circulation of 2.5 billion copies. It was translated into 200 languages since he wrote it in 1956.

Campus Crusade produced a movie version of Jesus' life, called Jesus, viewed by more than a billion people in 200 countries and translated into 800 languages and dialects, according to the ministry.