Bud Bylsma, 93, passed away quietly at his home in Kirkland, WA after dealing with cancer and kidney failure. He was born in Lynden, WA, grew up in Seattle, and graduated from Roosevelt High School. He was awarded a basketball scholarship to the University of Washington but wanted to attend a smaller school, so he attended Simpson Bible College (now Simpson University) and started a basketball team. In his second year, the team beat Seattle Pacific College in a David vs Goliath game, and SPC then offered him a full basketball scholarship. He excelled at playing center and fooling opponents much taller than he was (6’1”). He has received numerous alumni awards from both schools.

While at Simpson, he met and then married Patti Barber and soon started working for Young Life (YL), a ministry to teenagers. They moved to Philadelphia, then Baltimore and the DC area, then back to California where he worked in the San Jose and Los Angeles areas. The family then moved to Hinsdale, IL where he oversaw YL activities in four states. He was known for his ability to develop leadership—he hired those who eventually became Presidents of YL in the US and Canada and national directors of training and human resources.

With an MA from Fuller Seminary in hand, he finished his 30-year YL career while in Portland, OR and took a position as the Executive Director of HEED Bangladesh (Health, Education, Economic Development), an international non-profit consortium with more than 50 foreign staff from a dozen countries, some of whom were world class doctors, engineers, and agronomists. He said he wanted to “get an education” and learn from and about the third world. He and Patti moved to Dhaka, Bangladesh for 4 years while HEED built hospitals, flood control systems, and extensive health educational systems in many villages. He determined that most of what western agencies were doing was “welfare” and not the development of nationals. He then implemented his plan to turn all operations and oversight to the local people (everybody told him it wouldn’t work). He sent local staff abroad to develop expertise in their respective technical areas and in management. He nationalized the Board and within seven years, there were no foreign staff while HEED had doubled in size.

He returned to the US and worked at Bethany Presbyterian Church in Seattle and then began pursuing ministries to urban areas. He created the Northwest Leadership Foundation to “encourage, strengthen and development leadership for the social and spiritual renewal of the city.” Working with black leaders, he created the Coalition for Community Renewal that helped with housing, education, and job development. The foundation grew to have staff in Seattle, Tacoma, Spokane, and Salem. He moved to Portland and continued advising organizations in their effectiveness and helped create numerous non-profits. At Warner Pacific University, he was the catalyst for the creation of a new major in Urban Studies. He served on more than a dozen Boards, including two universities. When he was 71, he went to Albania to help resettle nearly a million refugees from Yugoslavia. He and Patti also made several trips to Cuba to find and visit her family of origin and teach local leaders, and they visited several other countries on short-term missions.

Bud is survived by Patti, his wife of 70 years, four children (Cherie, Peter, Philip, Stephen), 7 grandchildren, and 4 great grandchildren.