Ralph D. Winter

Ralph Winter graduated from Caltech in engineering, gained an M.A. in Teaching English as a Second Language at Columbia University in New York before completing a Ph.D at Cornell University in linguistics, cultural anthropology and mathematical statistics. He and his new bride, Roberta, then went to Princeton Theological Seminary where he pastored a rural New Jersey church as a student. In 1956, ordination followed finishing his seminary degree.

From 1956 to 1966, Ralph and Roberta served in Guatemala as missionaries under the Presbyterian Church USA, working with a Native American tribal group of the Mayan family of peoples. They assisted the existing national church in a variety of ways, ranging from education to small business development to a special kind of theological education by extension designed to develop local leaders through formal ministerial studies.

Partly on the basis of the latter, the Fuller School of World Mission invited Dr. Winter to become part of the new school, in the second year. During the next ten years the Winters dealt with over 1,000 missionaries in class and out of class, learning a great deal about the global cause of Christ in the process. During this period Dr. Winter founded the William Carey Library, a specialized publisher and distributor of mission materials, co-founded the American Society of Missiology, assisted in the founding of ACMC (Advancing Churches in Mission Commitment), and inaugurated the Perspectives Study Program.

Over the years teaching at Fuller, however, it became more and more clear that someone would have to do something special to recall the mission movement to a frontier focus. The Frontier Mission Fellowship was born in 1976 for that purpose, immediately initiating two major projects: the US Center for World Mission and Wiliam Carey International University.

In 1979, Dr. Winter intitiated the production of Mission Frontiers, the bulletin of the U.S. Center for World Mission, which now is published 6 times a year with a circulation of over 80,000 and a distribution that covers 160 countries. He has continued as the Editor of the publication since its founding.

In the next 20 years, a community of workers composing the Frontier Mission Fellowship was developed, ready and willing to tackle any problem impeding the mission movement. Winter served as the CEO of the Center until 1990, the University until 1997, and has since then been occupied mostly as the General Director of the Frontier Mission Fellowship, a mission society member of the Interdenominational Foreign Mission Association and the Evangelical Fellowship of Mission Agencies. Dr. Winter is the Vice-President of the Southwest Region of the Evangelical Missiological Society, as well as being active in the International Society for Frontier Missions, which he helped to initiate.

[  FRONT PAGE  ]   [  MEET OUR STAFF  ]  [  USCWM   ]  [  SUBSCRIBE  ] [ SEARCH ]
[ BACK ISSUE  ]  [ MISSION RESOURCES ]  [ SPECIAL INVITATION ]  [ YOUR COMMENTS  ]