March 01, 1990 by Ralph D. Winter

Dear Friends,

The most important thing in this issue is the profoundly stirring article on a radically different approach to Muslims. If you want to read more, then send in for the International Journal of Frontier Missions ---something you ought to send for anyway!

Also on the order page is the new, free periodical, AD 2000, edited by Thomas Wang, until recently the International Director of the Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization. He is now one of the key leaders in the AD 2000 Movement. I certainly want to urge you to send in for this marvelous periodical. The current issue is just crammed with exciting news of national-level meetings focusing on evangelizing each country by the year 2000---Nigeria, 306 from 100 organizations, Colombia (actually the Andes region) 700 people, Budapest, Belgium, etc. This is a remarkable ongoing testimony of God's global initiative! And the cast of characters, stupendous! Korean, Chinese, Latin American, all laboring on the world level, as if the whole world now belongs to Christ! Don't be without this on-going global record.

But now, back to our little magazine.

These are water-shed days, not only around the world but around this vast, bustling campus. The mortgage-burning is just behind us. We are coming out of a long winter-freeze on our full potential, and now we are bursting out in all directions. One of the newest dimensions is my increased attention to the university piston in the Center engine, and its role both in the States and around the world--- as you can see on the page to the left and in the two articles on pages 21-24.

My wife's concluding chapter for the Epilogue of her book, I Will Do a New Thing, is here also. It has much to ponder in it. But now I am beginning to repeat the table of contents!

In our next issue we are sending you a ponderous new Mission Resource Catalogue, something we have never produced before, much less sent out as part of Mission Frontiers.

Yours in Christ,

Ralph D. Winter

What's beyond the burning of the mortgage? ...new staff, new regional centers, new emphasis on our university...
...the transition in my own duties

Some churches refer to their church plant as a "campus." In our case we refer to a real campus, used for many years by what is now the Point Loma College, in San Diego (formerly called Pasadena College--- a Church of the Nazarene school), and still used as a campus by us.

The thirty-some acres--- now paid off---  over which (by GodÍs grace and your great generosity) we are stewards, is not large by Christian college standards. It could be set right down in a small lake on the property of Bethel College in Minneapolis. About half of the acreage consists of residences fifty years old.

But the property is just fine for a group of people who are pursuing "a war-time lifestyle." We would be embarrassed to be housed in luxury in view of the crying needs around the world to which we are devoutly pledged to listen with great sensitivity and without hypocrisy.

A great number of our staff are missionaries who have roughed it in many different fields.

"The Campus of the U.S. Center for World Mission"
Thus, many times in these pages we have referred to "the campus of the U.S. Center for World Mission," since we were for years working night and day to keep the wolf away from the door in order to raise the $15 million dollars necessary to buy it.

Now that all this property is paid for (Praise the Lord!), it is time to look more closely at what is going on, and why we need your continued prayers even though we are no longer asking for your funds.

In particular, in this issue (see especially pages 21-24), I want to focus on the university, which we established as one of the vital tools in our hands as a major mission center for the United States.

Working Behind the Scenes
My, this is a busy, humming place. It consumes an hour and a half simply to take a guided tour. However, everything falls into one of four "Divisions."

Mission Strategy--- finding out more about the unfinished task, the unreached peoples.

Mission Mobilization--- sharing what we find with student groups, churches, and mission agencies.

Mission Training--- guiding workers in Strategy and Mobilization into formal education opportunities. We also run our own university to supplement what others are doing.

Mission Services--- This catch-all category further supports our efforts in Strategy and Mobilization in the areas of editing, printing, publishing, computers, etc.

To fit all this into a small campus, we have converted two of the major dormitories to office buildings. These offices house the 43 separate corporations that are here, involving workers with backgrounds in about 70 different mission agencies, in many countries, and speaking 40 different languages--- a total of about 300 full-time staff, without counting a relatively small number of students.

The University?

While our Mission Training Division primarily analyzes and emphasizes the work of other schools throughout the world which have something to offer the mission industry, the Mission Training Division performs a small, very carefully chosen set of activities which require and justify the existence of our own university corporation.

As stated above, these activities are consciously supplementary to what other schools are doing. Our university is an experimental, laboratory school, designed to work well within the accepted standards of accreditation but mainly to pilot and pioneer certain types of educational programs which we hope other schools will wish to try out themselves.

One example is our program which trains people to teach English among the unreached peoples. We have already granted 70 unusually high quality masterÍs degrees in Applied Linguistics/TESOL.

Another example of our use of academic programs is our nationwide (and increasingly global) Perspectives Study Program. It has over 12,000 alumni, at least a third of whom are now missionaries and another third moving in that direction. Though not officially under the university, it demonstrates the function of the Mission Training Division as a supplement to what other schools are doing.

My Own Shift In Emphasis

Now that the property is paid off and the overall supervision of the four U.S. Center Divisions is in capable hands, I am perceptibly shifting my own focus of activities to the specific area of our own in-house university. Plodding ahead these last 13 years, it long ago gained the authorization of the State of California, and, after eight years, the significant attainment of "Full Institutional Approval," the highest status conferred by the State. (Many higher education institutions in California do not even attempt to achieve this status). We are now in the further process of demonstrating our adherence to the standards of regional accreditation (which in California is unmercifully delayed, precisely due to the lengthy State accreditation process, unique to California). I will no longer be the part-time but full-time President, and will be concentrating more than ever before on all those things which are described on pages 21-24.