What is Perspectives?
Perspectives on the World Christian Movement® is a 15-lesson study program designed to educate believers concerning God’s ancient and global purpose. This purpose is seen in the promise God made to Abraham in Genesis 12:3, “In you all the families of the earth will be blessed” and in the mandate Jesus gave to His followers in Matthew 28:19, “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations (people groups)” and in the revelation of God’s purpose fulfilled recorded in Revelation 7:9, “Behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb.”
The Perspectives on the World Christian Movement® course examines four “perspectives” of God’s mission - Biblical, Historical, Cultural and Strategic - exploring the why and the how of being on mission with God. First developed for college students in 1974 by Dr. Ralph Winter and the US Center for World Mission, Perspectives has emerged into a global movement attracting Christians of all generations and nations.
The hallmark expression of Perspectives students around the world is “my eyes were opened.” Almost 50 years of history has demonstrated that the experience of “taking Perspectives” results in transformed lives and transformed churches, ensuing in the transformation of unreached people groups as the gospel spreads within their midst.
OUR STORY
The Perspectives on the World Christian Movement® course was initially developed in 1974 as a follow up to the Urbana mission conference for U.S. college students expressing a commitment to global mission. Dr. Ralph Winter, founder of the U.S. Center for World Mission (now Frontier Ventures) garnered missiologists, theologians, anthropologists, and practitioners to contribute to a course of study to inform students of the biblical, historical, cultural, and strategic aspects of mission. Winter often expressed, “God cannot lead you on the basis of facts that you do not know.”
By 1980 the Perspectives on the World Christian Movement® course was spreading across the U.S. and beyond a student population. Churches joined together within cities to host classes, fostering a unifying dynamic within the Body of Christ. The Perspectives course was uniquely designed to serve various needs, simultaneously offered at audit, certificate, undergraduate, and graduate levels. The Perspectives Reader became a popular textbook in Christian universities and seminaries. Church leaders outside the U.S. gained exposure to the Perspectives curriculum while studying in the States, with a few initiating efforts to make Perspectives available in their home nations.
In 1987 Perspectives was launched in New Zealand, transforming the mission zeal and sending of the islanders. In the same year, portions of the curriculum were made available in Spanish and distributed as pre-congress reading for the inaugural Iberoamerican COMIBAM mission congress. These early forays into other lands were a forerunner of the international expansion of Perspectives to come.
In 2014, after completing his editorial role on the fourth edition of the Perspectives curriculum, Bruce Koch assumed directorship of Perspectives Global, which includes the Curriculum Council and the PGSO team. The PGSO maintains a small staff to service the growing Perspectives Global Network, which is led through a Global Leaders Council. With the publication of the Spanish version of the Perspectives curriculum, demand for national programs surged and program development shifted from addition to multiplication. Regional leadership was put in place, with an additional layer of leadership called Anchor Countries. An Anchor Country is an established Perspectives program that comes alongside emerging programs to train and assist in program startup in same language and/or nearby nations. This structure relieved the bottleneck of a small PGSO staff aiding program startup, and more fully globalized leadership. Perspectives on the World Christian Movement® programs, at various stages of development, are now on all continents (except Antarctica!) and in nine languages. The Perspectives Movement celebrates its 50th anniversary in 2024.
Interest in making Perspectives available in other languages and lands prompted a small group to gather in Amsterdam in 2003 to discuss how to respond to the growing demand. By this time numerous other courses and curricula had emerged deriving their content from Perspectives. The developers of some of those courses were at the Amsterdam meeting. In a spirit of collaboration, sharing a common goal to mobilize the Church, leaders agreed to protect the distinct identity of the Perspectives on the World Christian Movement® course while blessing derivative courses carrying the same DNA of Perspectives as part of the greater Perspectives Family. The popular Kairos course was the first to join the Perspectives Family. From this meeting a Perspectives Global Desk was formed.
From the turn of the millennium, national Perspectives programs began sprouting up across the globe. Australia, Korea, Nigeria, Brazil, and the United Kingdom were early frontrunners.
In 2006 a Global Perspectives Huddle hosted by the U.K. program signaled the formation of what was to become a distinct Perspectives Global ministry. Global Huddles were held every two years thereafter in various locations to enable national Perspectives on the World Christian Movement® programs to learn from each other, fellowship and pray together. Initially including both Perspectives and Perspectives Family leaders, the Global Mobilization Consultation (GMC) was spun off as a separate meeting at the Global Huddle in Indonesia in 2013.
The Perspectives Global Service Office (PGSO) was established in 2009, led by Matt Burns, with the deep involvement of both Bruce Koch and Steve Hawthorne. A formal structure provided processes and personnel to assist national leaders in Perspectives program development. It also enabled the undertaking of two massive translation projects: Spanish and Chinese.
First Perspectives class, 1974
Second Perspectives Global Huddle, U.K., 2006
Perspectives Global Huddles mark 10 years: Amsterdam 2003 to Indonesia 2013
Perspectives Brazil celebrates 10th Anniversary, 2019
Perspectives Brasil 10 year anniversary December 2019