Helen Odenwelder

BIBLE VISUALS INTERNATIONAL grew out of the ministry of Child Evangelism Fellowship of Eastern Pennsylvania. As CEF Director from 1942-1962, Helen E Odenwelder led CEF in an expansion to reach more children. She realized the need for publications which taught the principles of Christian growth. From her observations and the increased demand for visualized materials, she developed new children’s programs and products which emphasized evangelism, missions, quiet-time, personal devotions, family worship and witnessing.

As the circulation of this literature increased, more requests from children’s workers arrived from across the states. In order to meet the demand, the CEF Board of Directors took action to form a new organization dedicated to the production of these publications-thus BIBLE VISUALS INTERNATIONAL (BVI).

BVI became incorporated in 1959 and was led by Helen Odenwelder. In 1962 Helen relinquished her responsibilities as CEF Director to devote herself fully to BVI. In 1965 while ministering on a 3-month assignment in the Philippines, Helen noticed how awkward it was to trek through mountain trails with a flannel graph board and easel. Teaching in open-sided, thatched homes where the wind carried away the flannel graph figures like leaves in the autumn wind was almost impossible. During this time, the Lord gave Helen an enormous vision and upon her return to the States she organized a team of writers, illustrators and editors. In 1967, they initiated a series of illustrated flash cards volumes entitled The Visualized Bible Series. This material was designed to systematically convey the major doctrinal truths of the Bible from Genesis to Revelation–man’s fall, God’s nature, His plan of redemption through Christ, justification, etc. The teacher’s text would exclude American idioms allowing for easier language translation.

Helen field-tested the early drafts of The Visualized Bible Series in Mexico. These observations led to the development of BVI’s art standards: The illustrations must be simply rendered so that they would be easily understood and accepted in cultures worldwide; skin tones would reflect their mid-East, Bible setting; and illustrations would be printed in a twocolored format for affordability. Over a period of 25 years, 42 theologians, missionaries and Christian educators assisted Helen with the development of The Visualized Bible Series. As missionaries and national Christians in Asia, Africa, Europe and South America began using The Visualized Bible Series and other BVI materials, translation agreements were developed to guide the translation/printing process and to protect the doctrinal integrity of these publications. Some teaching texts were translated and printed to be used with BVI’s English volumes. In other situations, both foreign text and illustrations were printed together verseas. BVI asks no royalties from such printing projects.

To reflect the focus and growth of BVI’s ministry, the motto True to the Word, Truth to the World was adopted in 1975. In 1980, Helen retired from Bible Visuals International. In 1992, the 78-volume Visualized Bible Series was completed–the same year in which THRUST 2017 was begun as BVI’s new goal to see translations of Visualized Bible volumes and illustrated stories in 120 languages by 2017. In 1993, Karen Weitzel (Executive Director from 1989 to 2007) developed a Missions Committee and Missions Department to encourage the translation, printing and distribution of BVI materials overseas. That same year in honor of Helen’s vision, Karen established the Helen Odenwelder Missions Fund to help provide missionaries with a discount on their purchases of BVI publications.

Karen Weitzel

Presently, BVI publications are being used in over 150 countries by missionaries and nationals in over 70 mission agencies. Translations are of BVI materials are available in over 80 languages. In addition to the 78-volume Visualized Bible Series, BVI products include child-appealing visualized stories, visualized hymns of the faith, clip art and the Give-A-Vision Programs for teaching missions to children. In 1993, the True Colors of BVI was implemented with the purpose of adding full-color to all of our publications, meeting the changing needs of today’s society.

Shortly after that, Bible Visuals International also began going digital by providing our visualized stories on interactive CD-Roms. This enables educators to reach larger audiences using our materials with multimedia projection equipment.