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TechnoratiEditor’s note: The following are select tributes to Dr. Ralph D. Winter as they appeared in the May-August 2009 issue of Mission Frontiers, the bulletin of the U.S. Center for World Mission (www.uscwm.org). Winter passed away on May 20, 2009, after a long battle with cancer. He was 84.
Vonette Z. Bright
Co-Founder, Campus Crusade for
Christ, International
Ralph Winter and Bill Bright were classmates at Fuller Seminary. Ralph was a full-time student and Bill attended as his business would allow. The two remained friends and consulted each other on occasion. Bill’s questions for Ralph consisted of more theological matters and Ralph’s questions related more to business management and personnel concerns. There were few men in whom Bill had more confidence. We enjoyed Ralph and Roberta’s company on many occasions. After Roberta passed away, Barbara and Ralph visited in our home and were among the last couples we entertained before Bill became bedridden.
I often used a quote Ralph made at a gathering of classmates at the home of Dan and Ruth Fuller. It was certainly a statement of which my husband and I agreed. Ralph was concerned that so many of their classmates and colleagues were beginning to retire at the ages of 55-65. He elaborated that if a person begins his ministry at the age of 30 (ages of Ralph and Bill) and lives to the age of 90 he is only half through at the age of 60. Ralph pointed out some of the most significant work accomplished in ministry and in the secular world is accomplished by persons in their seventies and beyond. Dr. Donald McGavran, at the age of 80 with the Church Growth Movement, is an example. Ralph and Roberta invested their lives in missions and the education of young people. They have been stalwarts in maintaining conservative points of view of theology. Their brilliance and zeal will be missed. Their example and influence, however, will live on in countless numbers in whose lives they have invested. Ralph set a standard of achievement for which young theologians will desire to achieve in the future. It will be exciting to see how God leads others who will stand on the shoulders of this great man.
Chuck Colson
Founder, Prison Fellowship
The Church on earth recently lost a great visionary. If you’ve ever heard the terms “unreached people group,” “frontier missions,” or “10/40 window,” it’s because of Ralph Winter’s catalytic effect on the Church to fully embrace the Great Commission.
Winter burst onto the international stage in 1974 at the Lausanne Conference on World Evangelization. There among Christian leaders like Billy Graham, Bill Bright, and John Stott, Winter blew the lid off some of the most pernicious misconceptions of the day. Because the gospel had gone to every continent and nearly every country, many people had begun to assume that the work of missions was over. They thought that the only thing now was for local Christians to engage in evangelism.
In a paper circulated prior to the gathering, Winter wrote, “The awesome problem is . . . that most non-Christians in the world today are not culturally near neighbors of any Christians, and that it will take a special kind of ‘cross-cultural’ evangelism to reach them.” Continue »
