A Tribute to Dr. Ralph Winter

Since Missions has been a dominant theme on our blog lately, I (Kevin) thought it would be fitting to post a tribute that John Piper did for Ralph Winter (to get to Piper's tribute click on the title of this blog). Dr. Winter, the the founder of the U.S. Center for World Missions in Pasadena, California, died yesterday. Dr. Winter had a significant impact on my life. In 1994, while attending Victoria Community Church in Southern California, I took a course called Perspectives on the World Christian Movement, which Dr. Winter had helped originate, and had compiled a reader with the same title. That course caused a paradigm shift in my life. Among the many things that I learned from that course, the one thing that stands out the most is that our God is a missionary God, and our purpose on this earth, as Christians, is not to be all blessed up with no place to go, but we are "blessed up" to be a blessing to the nations.

Thank-you, Dr. Winter, for your service to the Lord, particularly in the area of missions to the unreached!