The Origin of the Perspectives Study Program

Roberta H. Winter

The Intervarsity Urbana Conference in December 1973 was a watershed meeting, 14,000 college students strong. Interest in missions on the college campus had been waning for years. Although Urbana attendance got larger each time the percentage of students signing commitment cards declined until 1973. At the previous meeting on the final night in 1970 only 8% had signed the card. But, amazingly, at the even larger meeting in 1973, 28% signed, signifying their willingness to become missionaries should God so direct. That meant thousands.

When Winter found out that Intervarsity had no plans for any special follow-up for these students, although crushingly busy at Fuller, he asked Intervarsity's permission to contact the students signing cards and try to interest them in a summer missions course to keep their commitment alive. By then it was already the end of January,1974 and to everyone it seemed hopeless to pull together a course for the very next summer. Furthermore Intervarsity had never given out to anyone the addresses of card-signing students.

David Howard, heading Urbana at Intervarsity, asked Winter five questions: 1) who will teach, 2) what will you teach, 3) where will you hold the classes, 4) who will sponsor the program, and 5) who will hold the bag financially. The intent was apparently to say “No, we won't use our address list to tell the card-signing students about this.” But in the next two weeks Winter made 200 phone calls and phoned back with an answer to all of these questions, much to David Howard's surprise.

IV begrudgingly said they would mention the program in their first outgoing letter some weeks away. They did not alert their campus staff, however, and little interest was aroused. But Intervarsity did at least send their own letter to the students who had signed their pledge cards and that did make a bit of difference: two students turned up as a result of Intervarsity's limp initiative.

Next, Winter convened a meeting of 15 mission executives at a restaurant in Wheaton, who willingly constituted the sponsoring body. Most of the mission professors sought already had their summer plans made and at best could give only a single week to this new program. But that was enough—in fact, it turned out to be much better than having just one or two professors for the whole time.

Well-known missionaries or mission professors such as Elizabeth Elliot and Herbert Kane were part of that first summer's program. Each took the first evening to tell his/her life story—a practice that unfortunately cannot be done when only one night is given to each professor, as is now the case.

Once the sponsors were in place, Winter urged his two oldest daughters, in college at UCLA and Caltech, who themselves wanted to attend, to get on the phone every morning before 8AM (midnight rates) and call students all across the country who by various methods had shown interest, telling them of the planned summer program. At Winter's request, Billy Graham offered to announce it twice on his Hour of Decision radio broadcast even though his board members were against his ever publicly backing some other organization.

Harold Lindsell, one of Winter's early professors when he had been himself a student at Fuller in 1947, allowed Winter to write a full page article-announcement in Christianity Today, something like “Is a New Student Mission Movement Aborning?

But with so few weeks to recruit students, it was really a miracle that any came at all. Only 29 enrolled during the first of the two periods, but in the middle of the first period Winter suggested that the whole program be stopped for a day so that these 29 highly-pleased students could write and call friends of theirs urging them to come for the second period. This effort brought in a number more. These were a dedicated bunch, and just enough for the program to break even financially. Typically, after the first few weeks, Winter lined up someone else to direct the program and set about creating a legal governing board.

The second summer (again at Wheaton College) David Bryant was in charge along with Charlie Mellis, former president of MAF. Because of his own experience with founding new, unusual organizations, Winter was very cautions to keep a close watch on the accounts no matter who was in charge of the program so that it wouldn't go under financially. It was to become the beginning of what is now the Perspectives course, a very successful program in mission education.

Meanwhile, the professors at Fuller were unhappy about Winter taking time to lay the ground work for this program. After all, his assignment, they reminded him, was to teach and to write. He explained to them that all the work he did putting this course together was done on his own time after hours and on weekends. Unlike many of them, he didn't go to football games—partially because all his children were daughters—and had far fewer social involvements than other faculty. But it was basically true that what thrilled him was getting things that were important started. It was in his blood as well as in his heart.

In the first session in the summer of 1974, each of the professors, accustomed to teaching for an entire semester, tended to require a term paper for just their one week of teaching. Consequently, the students were drowning in work. Fortunately, even though by that time Ralph had turned over the administration of the course to someone else, he still had enough influence to make sure the professors' requirements were reasonable and not kill the whole program by an excessive student load.

Later, when the USCWM was started, the current administrator (Charles Mellis) of what was still called, the Summer Institute of International Studies (later IIS/Perspectives) decided to close it down due to too small a student body. Winter asked that he be allowed to take it over and thus it was that its original board closed down and it came under board and administration of the U.S. Center for World Mission, all of whose staff were Perspectives alumni! It has grown rapidly and significantly since that time.

As designed by Winter, the Summer Institute of International Studies (later called Perspectives on the World Christian Movement) was to be a credit-bearing course, transferable even to secular universities. He wanted it to fit into not add onto students' already full schedules. And it was mainly so for the first few years, although gradually it has become more of a church-based mission mobilizing program. This change is not necessarily bad; it just has not yet fulfilled all the expectations of the original design.