Here are some favorite Ralph Winter quotes, to supplement this post on his life well-lived:

Jesus, today, might have put it, “Seek first the Kingdom of God and your career will take care of itself.” . . . God may indeed reward you with a startling career – but you will probably not know the details in advance. . . . Lots of people would be glad to follow God if He would only tell them in advance exactly all the wonderful things He would do for them and what high sounding job titles they might one day hold. But, remember Genesis 12:1? It is characteristic of the Christian life that God asks us to go without telling us where! . . . When we walk in the little light we have, and keep going on and on taking steps in faith, the ways in which He leads us are almost always, as we look back, something we could have never been told in advance! Untold marvels lie beyond each step of faith. You don’t really have to know what is beyond the next step. And you can’t find out without taking the next step. (“Join the World Christian Movement,” p. 722-23 in Perspectives on the World Christian Movement, Third Edition, edited by Ralph Winter and Steven Hawthorne, William Carey Library, 1999.)

Make no mistake. God honors those who seek His work above their worries. One of our staff members once said, “Now I think I understand what faith is; it is not the confidence that God will do what we want Him to do for us, but the conviction that we can do what He wants done for Him and let Him take care of the consequences.” (same article, p. 722)

You can’t be any kind of a solid Christian if you are unwilling to do anything He asks. (same article, p. 723)

A famous missionary wrote back to fellow students and pled with them: “Give up your small ambitions and come East to proclaim the glorious gospel of Christ.” For me to give “My utmost for His highest” is no guarantee of health, wealth, or happiness . . . but that kind of crucial choice is, in the experience of thousands who have tried it, the most exhilarating and demanding path of all callings. You don’t lose if you go with God. But you have to be willing to lose or you can’t stick close to God. (same article, p. 723)

The shattering truth is that four out of five non-Christians in the world today are beyond the reach of any Christian’s [normal] evangelism. Why is this fact not more widely known? I’m afraid that all our exultation about the fact that every country of the world has been penetrated has allowed many to suppose that every culture has by now been penetrated. This misunderstanding is a malady so widespread that it deserves a special name. Let us call it “people blindness” – that is, blindness to the existence of separate peoples within countries. . . . In the Great Commission . . . the phrase “make disciples of all ethne (peoples)” does not let us off the hook once we have a church in every country – God wants a strong church within every people! (“The New Macedonia,” Lausanne Conference on World Evangelization, 1974; reprinted in Perspectives cited above, p. 346.)

The essential missionary task is to establish a viable indigenous church planting movement that carries the potential to renew whole extended families and transform whole societies. It is viable in that it can grow on its own, indigenous meaning that it is not seen as foreign, and a church planting movement that continues to reproduce intergenerational fellowships that are able to evangelize the rest of the people group. . . .  God will reveal the glory of His kingdom among all peoples. We are within range of finishing the task, with more momentum than ever before in history. Be a part of it–“Declare His glory among the nations!” (“Finishing the Task,” by Ralph Winter and Bruce Koch, Perspectives as cited above, p. 517 and 524.)

Obedience to the Great Commission has more consistently been poisoned by affluence than by anything else. The antidote for affluence is reconsecration. Consecration is by definition the “setting apart of things for holy use.” (“Consecration to a Wartime, Not a Peacetime, Lifestyle”, Perspectives as cited above, p. 705.)

We must learn that Jesus meant it when He said, “Unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall much be required” (Luke 12:48). I believe that God cannot expect less from us as our Christian duty to save other nations than our own nation in wartime conventionally requires of us to save our own nation. (same article, p. 707. Emphasis in original.)