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A Short Anthology Representative of Ralph Winter's Concerns 1 A Short Anthology of Ralph D. Winter’s Key Writings Compiled and edited by Beth Snodderly 2 CONTENTS PREFACE PART ONE: OVERVIEW OF RALPH WINTER’S CONCERNS Mission and evangelism can be seen as a means of recruiting and renewing humans in a struggle which is not basically between God and man but between God-plus-redeemed- man against the kingdom of Satan and his works—Ralph Winter in “The Embarrassingly Delayed Education of Ralph D. Winter.” My Pilgrimage in Mission Are We Building an Enduring Christianity? A Summary of Winter’s Warfare Missiology PART TWO: UNREACHED PEOPLES Unreached Peoples: A people group among which there is no indigenous community of believing Christians able to evangelize this people group—Ralph Winter in “Unreached Peoples: The Development of the Concept,” p.135. I Was Bombed by an Explosive Idea Unreached Peoples: The Development of the Concept Beyond Unreached Peoples PART THREE: HISTORY IN MISSIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE The “blessing” of God Is, in effect, conditioned upon its being shared with other nations, since those who yield to and receive God’s blessing are, like Abraham, those of faith who subject themselves to God’s will, become part of His Kingdom, and represent the extension of His rule, His power, His authority within all other peoples—Ralph Winter in “The Kingdom Strikes Back.” The Kingdom Strikes Back: Ten Epochs of Redemptive History The Unfinished Epic in Five Acts Seven Men, Four Eras Churchless Christianity PART FOUR: KINGDOM ERA: RESTORING GOD’S REPUTATION BY DESTROYING THE WORKS OF THE DEVIL This is a battle to restore in people’s minds the glory of God by helping people to see that not only human but angelic evil is to be identified with Satanic initiative and not God’s initiative —Ralph Winter in “The Embarrassingly Delayed Education of Ralph D. Winter.” The Embarrassingly Delayed Education of Ralph D. Winter 3 What Are Mission Frontiers? Roberta Winter Institute Explanation Glorifying God by Fighting Evil PREFACE Missiologist and entrepreneur Ralph D. Winter had wide-ranging interests, all related to making God’s glory known among all peoples. Each of the four parts of this book contains representative writings that give a taste of his contributions to the mission world. These contributions included Theological Education by Extension, calling attention to Unreached People Groups, Missions History, and his last major focus that he called the “Kingdom Era.” In this last category he placed an emphasis on mobilizing the body of Christ to glorify God by destroying the works of the devil, especially in the realm of disease. Many of Winter’s writings were articles and editorials for the journals he edited: Mission Frontiers (http://www.missionfrontiers.org/) and the International Journal of Frontier Missiology ( http://www.ijfm.org/). Many more were informal papers prepared over the years for talks in missiology seminars at the U.S. Center for World Mission (now Frontier Ventures). You can DOWNLOAD a PDF of Ralph Winter's self-collected set of 59 articles in his book, Frontiers in Mission: Discovering and Surmounting Barriers to the Missio Dei. (The first two pages are blank—scroll down!) Other Winter articles and transcribed talks are published on the Ralph D. Winter Research Center website (https:// www.rdwresearchcenter.org/), along with articles by others on similar themes. Many of Winter’s themes showed up again and again in his talks and writings as he worked at getting new and unusual ideas across to busy people with other interests. His primary concerns at the end of his life were often misunderstood, rejected, or ridiculed. But he persevered, unaffected by others’ more conventional thinking. Since his death in 2009, some of his unconventional thinking has begun to look less radical to mission- minded people. This e-book is an attempt to make Winter’s thinking more accessible, with the hope that more people will find ways to make God’s character better known to the world through the actions of God’s people. PART ONE: OVERVIEW OF RALPH WINTER’S CONCERNS Mission and evangelism can be seen as a means of recruiting and renewing humans in a struggle which is not basically between God and man but between God-plus-redeemed- man against the kingdom of Satan and his works—Ralph Winter in “Embarrassingly Delayed Education of Ralph D. Winter.” 4 My Pilgrimage in Mission https://www.rdwresearchcenter.org/single-post/2018/11/14/My-Pilgrimage-in-Mission Originally published in 1995 in the International Bulletin of Missionary Research, this auto-biographical sketch was later re-published in Winter's self-collected set of writings, Frontiers in Mission, 22-25. Now, almost 25 years later, it still speaks prophetically to the mission world. ABSTRACT Winter begins his autobiographical overview with the words, “I am deeply ashamed about the disastrous breakdown of morality in my country.” He goes on to explain the factors in his life that led to his counter-cultural perspectives: His education; 10 years in Guatemala; helping start a movement of Theological Education by Extension (TEE); serving on the original faculty of the Fuller School of World Mission with Donald McGavran and Alan Tippitt; founding the American Society of Missiology and editing its journal; insights into serious limitations in contemporary mission strategy; Lausanne ’74; and the “final plunge” to found the U.S. Center for World Mission, following the advice of Dawson Trotman, “Never do what others can do or will do, if there are things God wants done that others either can’t do or won’t do.” He concludes with insights due in part to Lesslie Newbign regarding de-contextualization. “This is a case where we must (here at home) depend on the insights of our own cross-cultural workers, and yes, brothers and sisters from the other, ‘mission lands.’ Frankly, I see the world church as being not just the result of missionary outreach but by now an essential element in the survival of the West itself.” FULL ARTICLE I am deeply ashamed about the disastrous breakdown of morality in my country. Americans are world leaders in Bibles in homes and people in church, but are also world leaders in our divorce rate, illegitimate births, prison population, hand-gun killings, teen suicide rate, pornography export. I am ashamed. Our government spends millions in tax money to promote our deadly export of cigarettes (without warning labels). By that process alone Americans kill more people around the world than all the wars put together. And we provide most of the weapons as well. I am ashamed but not puzzled. A minority of our population has been a major world force in exporting our faith. Our churches overseas don’t have a high divorce rate—nor as exaggerated an emphasis on individual freedom. But we have been unable to learn from our overseas brothers in Christ. In our country we have enormous concern about the breakdown of our families (which is a global scandal). And from this many other evils derive. But how will we wake up to the loss of the extended family if we can’t listen to the overseas church? Morality begins at home. But our schools, clinics, even congregations wean us away from our families. We need to be “free” from parents and even spouses. How did I get these ideas? 5 Early Factors in Counter-cultural Perspective Don’t blame it on my parents. They were wonderful people, faithful and devout. Loyal Presbyterians, my parents were also strongly influenced by the interdenominational Christian Endeavor (CE) movement. At some point I realized that my faith must be more than just inherited, and began to examine all sorts of other beliefs that were not a part of the inter-denominationalism exhibited by Christian Endeavor—Roman Catholic, Seventh Day Adventist, Jehovah’s Witnesses, etc. I can still remember the look of dismay on my mother’s face when she found me reading the Book of Mormon. Further cultural loosening up took place over the next few years through World War II. The Bible itself demanded a total parting of the ways with the assumptions undergirding inherited culture. While in high school, I was involved in a sort of a Protestant version of the Jesuit order. The Navigators, which today has 4,000 members in 94 countries, was strong on discipline and Bible study, and involved serious daily and weekly commitments. Attending the California Institute of Technology—all but the first year under the auspices of the Navy (a cross-cultural de-contextualizing experience in itself)—was a time of radical questioning of the social order in which I was born. Already scientifically inclined, I gained there a much deeper acquaintance with the wonders of nature (through Nobel prize-winner professors, etc.). Later, in seminary all this fused into a permanent merger of science and theology. All of these influences were in one way or another distinctly “counter-cultural.” And CE, Navigators, Evangelicalism were all globally oriented. In that milieu it is not surprising that I came across one of the earliest anthropology books written by an American evangelical missionary— Gordon H. Smith. But that only whetted my appetite. A hefty 150-page chapter on anthropology by Smalley and Reyburn (in an American Scientific Affiliation book) made clear to me that anthropology of all academic disciplines offered more to a boy from the “Evangelical ghetto” than any other field of study. My parents (and others) thought I would never settle down to a career. (The war gave me college tuition that helped me study in eight schools beyond college.) Would I continue in engineering? Then why, as a college graduate, go back to a Christian college to learn Greek? Or to a Bible school to study their unique method of studying the Bible? Why take two years of seminary if I was not going to be a minister? Why did I shift to an M.A.
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