The U.S. Center for World Mission, later known as the Venture Center, was a collaborative Christian mission base in Pasadena, California from 1976 until 2019. The center sought to connect other like-minded organizations around prayer, research, innovation, media, education, strategy, and mobilization with a continued focus on unreached people groups.
Spouses Ralph D. Winter (1924-2009) and Roberta Winter (1930-2001) founded the U.S. Center for World Mission in 1976 in a few rented offices on the campus of Pasadena Nazarene College. Their purpose was to pull people together to concentrate on the unreached people groups. The campus had previously hosted the Nazarene University Pasadena campus, and earlier the Pacific Bible College and Pasadena College (1897-1976).[1]
When the Pasadena Nazarene College campus was up for sale,[when?] the U.S. Center engaged in a bidding war with the Church Universal and Triumphant, which the U.S. Center won.[2] The money came primarily through small gifts of individual Christians around the country, and through the efforts of televangelist Dr. William Davis who promoted the project on national television and traveled across the country to meet personally with wealthy Christian donors. The final payment for the campus was made in 1988.
The efforts to establish the U.S. Center have also led to the development of a wide-ranging movement to the frontiers of mission that now involves thousands of people and hundreds of missions organizations. The Center seeks to serve this growing movement with resources, information, and strategic insights that can help the movement grow and effectively reach all the unreached peoples.[3] In 2015, the US Center was renamed the Venture Center.[4]
The Venture Center and its affiliated ministries are run by members of Frontier Ventures, which was founded by Ralph D. Winter.
Legacy
Archives of the center now reside at the Ralph D. Winter Research Center. Many Christian ministries had their genesis at the center or resided for a season before moving on to new locations throughout the world.[2]
1 2 Winter, Roberta H. (2003). I Will Do a New Thing: The 'U.S. Center for World Mission -- And Beyond. Pasadena, California, USA: William Carey Library Pub. ISBN0-87808-448-7.
Parsons, Greg H. (2012). Ralph D. Winter: Early Life and Core Missiology. Pasadena, California, USA: WCIU Press. (A published PhD from the University of Wales Trinity Saint David)
Winter, Roberta H. (2003) [1987], I Will Do a New Thing: The U.S. Center for World Mission – And Beyond, Pasadena, California, USA: William Carey Library
Winter, Ralph D. (2005), Frontiers In Mission, Pasadena, California, USA: William Carey Library
Winter, Ralph D. (1966). "This Seminary Goes to the Student". World Vision Magazine. Monrovia: World Vision.
Winter, Ralph D. (1969a). "The Reluctant Missionary". World Vision Magazine. Monrovia: World Vision.
Winter, Ralph D. (1969b). "The Seminary That Became a Movement". World Vision Magazine. Monrovia: World Vision.
Winter, Ralph D. (1970). "The Acron that Exploded". World Vision Magazine. Monrovia: World Vision.
Winter, Ralph D. (1972), The Extension Model in Theological Education: What It Is and What It Can Do, Pasadena: Fuller Theological Seminary.
Winter, Ralph D. (1992). "Defining the Frontiers: A Response". International Journal for Frontier Missions. 9: 9–11.
Winter, Ralph D. (2003b). "Eleven Frontiers of Perspective (Part 2)". International Journal for Frontier Missions. 20: 135–144.
Winter, Ralph D.; Hawthorne, Stephen C. (2009). Perspectives on the World Christian Movement: a Reader. Pasadena: William Carey Library.
Winter, Ralph D.; Latourette, K. S. (1970), The twenty-five unbelievable years, 1945 to 1969, South Pasadena: William Carey Library
Winter, Ralph D.; Winter, Roberta H. (1968). "When School is Half a World Away". World Vision Magazine. Monrovia: World Vision.
Winter, Ralph D. (1975). "The Highest Priority: Cross-cultural Evangelism". In Douglas, James Dixon (ed.). Let the Earth Hear His Voice: Official Reference Volume, Papers and Responses. Minneapolis: World Wide Publications. ISBN978-0-89066-252-6.
The Church of the Nazarene is a Christian denomination that emerged in North America from the 19th-century Wesleyan-Holiness movement within Methodism. It is headquartered in Lenexa within Johnson County, Kansas. With its members commonly referred to as Nazarenes, it is the largest denomination in the world aligned with the Wesleyan-Holiness movement and is a member of the World Methodist Council.
Church planting is a term referring to the process that results in a new local Christian congregation being established. It should be distinguished from church development, where a new service, worship center or fresh expression is created that is integrated into an already established congregation. For a local church to be planted, it must eventually have a separate life of its own and be able to function without its parent body, even if it continues to stay in relationship denominationally or through being part of a network.
Kenneth Scott Latourette was an American historian of China, Japan, and world Christianity. His formative experiences as Christian missionary and educator in early 20th century China shaped his life's work. Although he did not learn the Chinese language, he became known for his magisterial scholarly surveys of the history of world Christianity, the history of China, and of American relations with East Asia.
Point Loma Nazarene University (PLNU) is a private Christian liberal arts college with its main campus on the Point Loma oceanfront in San Diego, California, United States. It was founded in 1902 as a Bible college by the Church of the Nazarene.
Ralph Dana Winter was an American missiologist and Presbyterian missionary who helped pioneer Theological Education by Extension, raised the debate about the role of the church and mission structures and became well known as the advocate for pioneer outreach among unreached people groups. He was the founder of the U.S. Center for World Mission, William Carey International University, and the International Society for Frontier Missiology.
Pioneers is a Christian missions organization focused on church planting among unreached people groups. It was founded by former Wall Street Journal National Sales Manager Ted Fletcher in 1979 and has offices in Orlando, Florida, Australia, Ghana, Canada, New Zealand, the UK, Singapore, and Brazil. Pioneers operates in 97 countries, training and supporting 3,077 international members serving on 345 teams among 207 people groups in 154 languages.
Frontier Missions is a Christian missiological term referring to the natural pioneering of the gospel among ethno-cultural and ethno-linguistic population segments where there is no indigenous church. The phrase was originally used with reference to Roman Catholic, and later Protestant, mission stations in the Western United States.
The Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization, more commonly known as the Lausanne Movement, is a global movement that mobilizes Christian leaders to collaborate for world evangelization. The movement's fourfold vision is to see 'the gospel for every person, disciple-making churches for every people and place, Christ-like leaders for every church and sector, and kingdom impact in every sphere of society'.
Alan Richard Tippett was a Methodist missionary, missiologist, and anthropologist.
The Joshua Project is a Christian organization based in Colorado Springs, United States, which seeks to coordinate the work of missionary organizations to track the ethnic groups of the world with the fewest followers of evangelical Christianity. To do so, it maintains ethnologic data to support Christian missions. It also tracks the evangelism efforts among 17,446 people groups worldwide—a people group being "the largest group within which the Gospel can spread as a church planting movement," according to the project's website—to identify people groups as of yet unreached by Christian evangelism.
The first of four global consultations celebrating the centennial of Edinburgh 1910, the Tokyo 2010 Global Mission Consultation brought together around 1,000 Christian mission leaders from 140 countries in May 2010. Another 1,000 attendees came to Tokyo 2010 as observers. The theme and watchword of the consultation was "Making disciples of every people in our generation." This watchword built on the previous two watchwords of Edinburgh 1910 and Edinburgh 1980, which were “the evangelization of the world in this generation” and “a church for every people by the year 2000.” The watchword of Tokyo 2010 thus took the “generation” time frame of Edinburgh 1910, and the social group emphasis of Edinburgh 1980, and added the discipling aspect of Matthew 28:19-20.
John Robb is the former Chairman for the International Prayer Council, and formerly led the prayer ministries of World Vision. The IPC is a network of regional and national prayer ministries and networks around the world. He and the IPC provided leadership for the World Prayer Assembly that was held in Jakarta, Indonesia, May 14–18, 2012. The WPA united tens of millions of people to pray for the healing and transformation of the world.
In Christianity, an unreached people group refers to an ethnic group without an indigenous, self-propagating Christian church movement. Any ethnic or ethnolinguistic nation without enough Christians to evangelize the rest of the nation is an "unreached people group". It is a missiological term used by Evangelical Protestants. The Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization defines a people group as "the largest group within which the gospel can spread as a church planting movement without encountering barriers of understanding or acceptance." "Nation" is sometimes used interchangeably for "people group". The term is sometimes applied to ethnic groups in which less than 2% of the population is Evangelical Protestant Christian, Including nations where other forms of Christianity are prevalent such as Western Catholicism, Eastern Christianity or Lutheranism.
In Christian missiology, an insider movement is a group or network of people from a non-Christian religion who consider themselves followers of Jesus while remaining relationally, culturally and socially a part of the religious community of their birth. Though members of insider movements do not typically join Christian churches in their area or region, they may see themselves as part of the wider Body of Christ. It has been observed that as members of these groups follow Jesus and the Bible, they personally reject, reinterpret, or modify the non-biblical beliefs found in their religious communities. This process makes them different in some ways from their co-religionists, yet when groups can faithfully follow Jesus without formally disassociating themselves from their religious communities, insider movements can occur. Such movements have been observed among a number of religious groups, most notably among Jews, Muslims and Hindus.
The International Association for Mission Studies (IAMS) is an international, inter-confessional, and interdisciplinary professional society for the scholarly study of the Christian mission and it’s impact in the world and the related field of intercultural theology. IAMS convenes international and regional conferences, facilitates collaborative study groups researching in mission studies, and publishes the journal Mission Studies.
Roger E. Hedlund is an American pastor who has spent more than three decades in India as a theological teacher and researcher with major contributions to missiology with special reference to Indian ethos.
William Carey International University (WCIU) is a private faith-based university in Pasadena, California, USA, that provides distance education programs. WCIU offers online-only graduate degree programs in International Development with various specializations and is affiliated with several Christian non-governmental organizations.
Dana Lee Robert is an historian of Christianity and a missiologist. She is a professor at Boston University, where she has worked since 1984. She was the co-founder of the Center for Global Christianity and Mission in 2001, one of the first university-based Centers on World Christianity in North America. For years, Robert held the School of Theology's Truman Collins Professorship in World Christianity and History of Mission, but in 2022 she was installed in the William Fairfield Warren Distinguished Professorship, the highest distinction bestowed upon senior faculty members who remain actively involved in research, scholarship, teaching, and the University’s civic life.
International Student Ministry (ISM) refers to evangelical Christian ministry among international students within an academic context, often carried out by Protestant college religious organizations, volunteers and churches. It is considered part of the church's mission, within the broader framework of diaspora missions. The first two decades of the 21st century have seen a sharp growth in the number of international students globally with a corresponding development in ISM.
David B. Barrett was a British visiting professor at Columbia University, an Anglican priest, and research secretary for the Anglican Consultative Council.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
