Dr. Ralph Winter passed away this week. He is arguably the most influential thinker in global missions in the past 100 years, revolutionizing missions with his call in 1974 for Christians to go to “unreached peoples” and not just nation-states.
My senior year of college I had the great opportunity to hear Dr. Winter speak to a small group of students one evening. His final words of the night have vividly stuck with me. When asked what we could pray for he told the group that he was dying of cancer, but that we should not waste our time praying for him and his health. Instead of praying for an old man, he wanted us to pray for the peoples of the world.
He spoke these words with full conviction. They were not petty words leisurely thrown out to brighten a reality with self-deprication. They were words of a man who truly counted his life as not his own. The lives of others–all the peoples of the earth–were more important.
John Piper wrote a personal tribute to Dr. Winter, and included this video:
