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By Chuck Colson
THE CHURCH on earth recently lost a great visionary. You may not be familiar
with his name, but it’s likely you’ve witnessed the results of Ralph Winter’s strategic thinking.
10-40 window
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 – which inspired the church to fully embrace the Great Commission.
A retired missionary, professor at Fuller Seminary, and PhD in linguistics,
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 neighbours of any Christians, and that it will take a special
kind of ‘cross-cultural’ evangelism to reach them.”
Winter knew that if every Christian in the world shared the gospel with his
neighbours, only half the world would hear it.
To illustrate his point, Winter explained the case of the Batak church in
Indonesia, where the gospel had taken root and people were actively
evangelizing.
Mosaic of people
But because of Indonesia’s mosaic of languages and people groups, for the Batak to reach others – even in their own country – they would have to engage in cross-cultural missions.
With America becoming more and more multicultural, and with our secular
neighbours not even speaking our language, we would do well to see our
evangelism at home as Winter taught us to see it around the world.
Ralph Winter’s strategic emphasis on reaching not simply every nation with the gospel, but
every people group, dramatically altered the strategies and budget allocations
of missionary organizations around the world.
In fact, Billy Graham wrote: “Ralph Winter has . . . accelerated world evangelization.”
A few years after Lausanne, Winter founded the U.S. Center for World Missions;
and soon after that, the William Carey International University. He had no
financial backing at the time, and only $100 to begin with.
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Urgent and strategic
Audacious? Yes. But as Winter wrote, “We were willing to fail because the goal we sensed was so urgent and strategic.”
But the center did not fail. Since then, the center has not only trained
thousands of missionaries and support personnel, but also has worked tirelessly
to bring the vision of reaching hidden peoples to the wider church.
The Perspectives course, a college-level course the center sponsors, has equipped almost 60,000
lay people around the world with this vision.
In 2005, Time magazine included Winter as one of the top 25 most influential evangelicals.
Last year, the North American Mission Conference gave him the lifetime service
award.
But no doubt Winter will take greater pleasure in meeting the men and women from
every tribe, tongue and nation who praise the name of Jesus in glory – all because of his passion to spread Christ’s message.
Chuck Colson is the founder of Prison Fellowship. This piece first appeared as a
Breakpoint commentary.
July 2009
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