U.S. Center for World Mission

Encyclopedia : U : US : USC : U.S. Center for World Mission

U.S. Center for World Mission (USCWM) was founded by Dr. Ralph D. Winter and Roberta Winter in 1976, headquartered in Pasadena, California.

The History

Before the U.S. Center for World Mission was established, God was moving in the hearts of Ralph and Roberta Winter.

While teaching other missionaries, the Winters gained keen insight into the task of world evangelization. They realized that even if every Christian in the world witnessed to everyone in his or her own culture, only half of the world's population would hear the gospel. Because of barriers of culture and language, the rest of the world was sealed off from the Gospel in people groups without a viable, indigenous, evangelizing church.

To establish a church among every unreached people group is the driving vision and burden of the U.S. Center for World Mission. As the Center was getting started, many other ministries were formed along the way.

Even before the Center began, the need to make mission resources more available led to the founding of the William Carey Library Publishers (WCL). Because of WCL, valuable mission books, tapes, and videos are published and distributed no matter what the quantity.

In 1974, the Institute of International Studies arose out of a need not only to train people as missionaries but also to provide an intensive foundation on what is happening in the world and what needs to happen. Now called the Perspectives on the World Christian Movement, with over 38,000 alumni in the U.S. and Canada, the course covers information crucial to any person interested in God's global purposes.

Building on these ministries, the Winters took a radical step by founding an organization in 1976 focused on pulling people together to concentrate on the plight of the unreached peoples, that is, U.S. Center for World Mission .

Threatened for 11 years by huge property payments, the U.S. Center for World Mission nevertheless concentrated on spreading the vision for the unreached. The financial struggles themselves became a soapbox from which to proclaim the vision. The Center hoped to motivate thousands who could then build a movement that would bring tens of thousands in touch with God's heart for the unreached. The teamwork and prayer of the staff and thousands around the country helped to thrust this movement forward, building a network that is yet to be fully utilized.

Years earlier, during their service in Guatemala, the Winters realized that pastors in little churches all over the world would never be able to receive the training they needed while in ministry. In collaboration with other missionaries and leaders on the field, Theological Education by Extension (TEE) was born.

For many years, the vision of finishing the task was crystallized in the phrase, "A Church for Every People by the Year 2000". This became the watchword of the Center (and of a global conference at Edinburgh) in 1980 to set a realistic goal to aim for as the Student Volunteers did just one century before.

Now, as we move into the 21st Century and have seen God's faithfulness in paying off the USCWM's facility, we have greater opportunity than ever, and greater anticipation that we may live to see the completion of the Great Commission in our generation.

The Founders: Ralph and Roberta Winter

Ralph and Roberta Winter served as missionaries for ten years with a Mayan tribal group in Guatemala. For another ten years, Dr. Winter was on the faculty of the School of World Mission at Fuller Seminary where he came alongside 1,000 missionaries to study their field situations in depth. Teaching and studying history led him to look at what God had done in the 4000 years since Abraham.

Dr. Winter thus began assembling facts and statistics about where the Gospel had penetrated—and where it had not. As he put the whole picture together, he saw a startling—and at first frightening—situation. Not only were most of the world's individuals without the Gospel, most of them were in Biblical 'nations' which no one was targeting. Thus, these individuals had little or no hope of hearing the Gospel, no matter how fast the Church grew where it was already established. So in 1976 the Winters founded the U.S. Center for World Mission—to emphasize the unfinished missionary task to reach the unreached peoples of the world.

They have four married daughters, all missionaries, and 13 grandchildren growing up in three countries.

External links

[USCWM official website]
[Perspectives on the World Christian Movement website]
[Biography Page for USCWM founder Ralph D. Winter by Christian Post]

From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.