Ralph D. Winter became well-known for helping mission leaders grasp how they could accomplish more by work-ing together in strategic ways. His education began with a degree in civil engineering at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California. He earned a mas-ter’s degree in teaching English as a second language at Columbia University. He then pursued a PhD in structural linguistics at Cornell University with a minor in cultural anthropology and mathematical statistics.
In 1956, Winter and his wife Roberta joined the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions. They worked for ten years in Guatemala among the native Mayan people. Along with the development of small businesses for bi-vo-cational pastoral students, Winter joined others to birth an innovative nonresidential approach to theological studies for pastors known as Theological Education by Extension (TEE).
In 1966, Donald McGavran invited Winter to become part of the new School of World Mission (SWM) at Fuller Theological Seminary. For ten years, Winter learned a great deal from over a thousand missionaries in and out of class. During these years he founded the publishing company that became William Carey Publishing, which specializes in publishing mission resources.
In the summer of 1974, Winter launched a study pro-gram designed primarily for university students, offering a summary of the missiology taught at SWM. He called it the Institute of International Studies (IIS). This program was repeated and eventually was called Perspectives on the World Christian Movement.
In the same summer of 1974, Winter presented a paper at Lausanne, Switzerland, to the International Congress on World Evangelization. Winter’s presentation underscored the reality of thousands of people groups that were being overlooked by present mission efforts.
Winter founded the U.S. Center for World Mission in 1976 and, a few months later, William Carey International University. This community of workers, now known as Frontier Ventures (www.frontierventures.org), continues. Winter passed away in May 2009 in his home in Pasadena, California.
Steve Hawthorne had to sneak his way into Urbana ‘76, a missions conference organized by InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. He was there only to hear the biblical exposition
of John Stott. The conference was sold out, so he slept on a dormitory floor, ate out of vending machines, and paid his registration fee via the offering plate. The opening address of John Stott, “The Living God Is a Missionary God” (now chapter 1 of this book), surprised him because of the rich, biblical beauty of God’s purpose. The following day he lis-tened to Ralph Winter present the strategic possibility of completing world evangelization. Before that moment, Hawthorne had only heard people say that we need to do more evangelism. It was the first time that he’d heard the idea of finishing evangelizing the entire world. He signed up that day for a correspondence course designed by Ralph Winter. The content of that course eventually became the Perspectives course.
While completing a master’s degree at Fuller Seminary’s School of World Mission, Hawthorne helped as an assistant for the Institute of International Studies. In 1981, along with others at the USCWM, he coedited the Perspectives reader with Ralph Winter. Hawthorne worked in the early 1980s as executive editor of World Christian magazine. During those years he conceived and launched a series of teams that did ethnographic research to identify unreached peoples in world-class cities in Asia and the Middle East. He continued that work with Caleb Project, a student mission mobilization ministry.
In 2013, Hawthorne completed a PhD in biblical mission theology from the School of World Mission at Fuller Seminary. He now directs WayMakers, a mission and prayer mobilization ministry focused on increasing hope for Christ’s greater glory in a prayed-for world. He continues to write materials that help churches and mission agencies cultivate maturity in serving God’s purposes. He says of his writing and speaking, “I like to commit arson of the heart.”
Pam Arlund has an MA and a PhD in linguistics from the University of Texas at Arlington, where many of her classes were taught by Bible translators. She also has a BA (cum laude) in international affairs with an East Asia con-centration from The George Washington University, in Washington DC.
In college, while serving as chapter president of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, Arlund attended her first Urbana missions conference. There, she first heard about God’s glory among all the nations of the earth. She then served for ten years as a church planter and Bible translator among a small people group in the mountains of Central Asia. She had the privilege of beginning Bible translation into their mother tongue, seeing the first believers in that people group, and helping form local churches.
For more than fifteen years, she has been instructing Perspectives classes all over the world. While instructing, she fell in love with the Perspectives curriculum and the people using it. Arlund is a member of the missions agency
All Nations International. She is also part of the Society of the Good Shepherd. Pam has written many articles and books, most of which are scholarly. Her book Stick Figures Save the World has helped disciples of all ages and ethnic backgrounds learn and share the stories of the Bible. Pam was born and raised in Kansas City, Missouri, where she still lives.