Loren Cunningham

Loren Cunningham was born on June 30, 1935, in Taft, California. His father, Tom, was a minister in the Assemblies of God, and his mother, Jewell, was a woman of faith. The family moved often, as his father served in different churches. Loren grew up in the church and was a lively and adventurous boy. He had a gift for talking with people and was a natural leader. At the age of twelve, he heard a missionary speak, and he felt a call to serve in the mission field. He told his parents that he wanted to go to the world.

He studied at Central Bible College in Springfield, Missouri, where he prepared for the ministry. As a student, he traveled with a group on summer outreach trips to the Bahamas. During one of the trips, he had a vision of waves of young people, the wave after wave, going to the nations to spread the gospel. He saw that young people in their teens and twenties could be mobilized to go. He said that he saw the map of the world with waves that flowed out over the earth. The vision became the foundation of his life work.

In 1960, he founded Youth With A Mission, an organization that sent young people on short-term missionary trips. It began as a small group in Southern California. The first teams went to the Bahamas and to Hawaii. The idea was simple. Young people should be given the chance to serve God in a foreign culture, and they should be trained and encouraged. He married Darlene Scratch in 1963, and she became his partner in the work. They had a family and lived a life of faith, without a steady income.

YWAM grew into one of the largest missionary movements in the world. It now has thousands of staff and volunteers in over a hundred countries. It runs a large number of training schools, called Discipleship Training Schools, and sends out outreach teams. It also operates a fleet of ships for mercy ministry, a medical ministry and a university. He developed the idea that missions should be a work of the whole church and not just professionals. He taught that believers should obey God's call in every sphere of society. This included the arts, the media, the schools and the government. He was a key figure in the idea of the seven mind-molders of society.

He wrote several books, including Is That Really You, God?, published in 1984, which tells of how he learned to hear the voice of God and to live by faith. The book has been read by many. He also wrote Daring to Live on the Edge, on the life of faith. He was a speaker at conferences and traveled in many nations. He was a warm and humorous man, who made friends easily.

He had his weaknesses. He was a man of great vision who was not always careful with details. YWAM faced a number of organizational problems, among them disputes about authority and finances. In its early years, there were cases of poor discipline and some excesses. He was criticized for the loose structure of the movement. In 2008, he stepped back from the role of president, and a council took over. He has acknowledged that he is better at starting things than at running them.

He is a living man, and the record of his life is still being written. His life shows what can happen when a young man has a vision and acts on it. A student in a Bible college saw waves of young people and set in motion a movement that has reached the world.