Ralph Winter

Life

Winter was born on December 8, 1924, in Los Angeles, California. Some obituaries give his year of birth as 1925; however, 1924 is consistent with reports that he was 84 years old when he died in 2009. He studied civil engineering at the California Institute of Technology, then attended Princeton Theological Seminary and earned a doctorate from Cornell University in fields including linguistics and anthropology. An ordained Presbyterian minister, he served with his wife, Roberta (1930–2001), as a missionary for about ten years among the Mam, an indigenous Maya people of Guatemala. He then taught for about ten years at the School of World Mission of Fuller Theological Seminary before resigning his tenured professorship in 1976. After Roberta's death he married Barbara Scotchmer. Following a battle with cancer, he died at his home in Pasadena on May 20, 2009.

Ministry and Contributions

• Theological Education by Extension: In Guatemala he played a leading role in pioneering Theological Education by Extension (TEE), an approach that enables local church leaders to study theology without leaving their livelihoods or communities.
• The unreached people group concept: In July 1974 the International Congress on World Evangelization convened in Lausanne, Switzerland, under the leadership of Billy Graham. At the congress Winter delivered an address presenting cross-cultural evangelism (evangelism that crosses cultural and linguistic barriers) as the "highest priority." At the time, a widespread view held that because churches existed in nearly every country, it was sufficient for existing churches to evangelize their neighbors. Winter criticized this view as "people-blindness" and presented statistics showing that more than two billion people belonged to "hidden peoples" who could not hear the gospel within their own language and culture. His address built on Donald McGavran's concept of people groups. It is regarded as a turning point that shifted the basic unit of mission strategy from the nation to the people group, and the idea subsequently spread under the term "unreached people groups."
• U.S. Center for World Mission: Founded by Winter and his wife in Pasadena in 1976, the center is a mission research and mobilization organization. It reportedly began with no staff apart from a single secretary and $100 in cash. The organization that operates it is now known as Frontier Ventures.
• Other institutions: Winter founded the mission publisher William Carey Library, William Carey International University (1977), and the International Society for Frontier Missiology (1986). He also helped found the American Society of Missiology. He originated the mission education course known today as Perspectives.

Influence on the Korean Church

The term "unreached people groups" and people-group-based mission strategy are widely used in Korean mission circles. Both have their roots in the concerns Winter raised at the Lausanne Congress. One document of the Lausanne Movement states that Winter's 1974 challenge, together with other voices, was used to help spark a global missionary movement in which Korea and many other nations send missionaries.

Assessment

In 2005 the American newsweekly Time named him one of the 25 most influential evangelicals in America. C. Peter Wagner, his colleague at Fuller Theological Seminary, regarded him as one of the handful of people who most influenced world evangelization in the twentieth century. At the same time, those who worked with him recall that his constant stream of new ideas sometimes strained administrative staff. Voices of caution regarding the unreached people group strategy have also arisen within evangelicalism, arguing that the strategy exerts excessive influence over contemporary mission strategy and that mission should not be limited solely to pioneering work among unreached people groups.