Loren’s personal call to the Great Commission came while kneeling at the altar during a brush arbor revival meeting in 1948 at the age of 13. God spoke to him through Mark 16:15 “Go into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature.”

This personal call was confirmed by a vision – a mental movie – that he saw as he was preparing to minister in the Bahamas in 1956. He was staying in a missionary’s home, kneeling beside the bed, praying in preparation to speak that night. He says, “Suddenly I was looking at a map of the world, only the map was alive and moving! I could see all the continents, and waves were crashing onto their shores. Each wave went onto a continent, then receded, then came up further until it covered the continent completely. The waves became young people–kids my age and even younger–covering all the continents of the globe. They were talking to people on street corners and outside bars. They were going from house to house and preaching the Gospel. They came from everywhere and went everywhere, caring for people. Then just as suddenly as it had come, the scene was gone.” (Excerpt from Is That Really You, God? by Loren Cunningham with Janice Rogers, YWAM Publishing.)

Loren was also the Co-founder (together with his wife Darlene and Dr. Howard Malmstadt) of the University of the Nations (UofN), a global ministry of YWAM (www.uofn.edu) designed around the "Seven Spheres" that influence every society.

In 1975, God gave insights about these spheres simultaneously to Loren and Dr. Bill Bright, the founder of Campus Crusade for Christ (CRU).

The UofN was established in 1978 and has grown to offer more than 600 courses and seminars (some in nearly 100 languages) held at more than 800 locations/campuses in 160+ countries.

Hundreds of thousands of students are registered within the global UofN system. They all begin with the Discipleship Training School (DTS), which serves as the entry-level course and pre-requisite for all other UofN courses and for becoming YWAM staff.

The Christian Magna Carta, penned by Loren in 1981, included both his personal goals and YWAM's corporate goals that are implicit in the Gospel:

Everyone on earth has the right to:

1. Hear and understand the Gospel of Jesus Christ,

2. Have a Bible available in his/her own language,

3. Have a Christian fellowship available nearby to be able to meet for fellowship regularly each week and to have biblical teaching and worship with others in the body of Christ,

4. Have a Christian education available for their children,

5. Have the basic necessities of life: food, water, clothing, shelter, and health care,

6. Lead a productive life of fulfillment spiritually, mentally, socially, emotionally, and physically.

Since the 1960s, Loren has carried a burden with many other global leaders to make the Bible accessible to every person on earth, thereby ending Bible poverty worldwide. Wherever the Scripture goes, the Spirit of God brings transformation! He met with hundreds of influential leaders in evangelical, charismatic, and Pentecostal denominations and those leading the oldest Christian traditions to invite their partnership in this cause.

This passion became fine-tuned in his final years to focus on making an ORAL translation of the Bible available in each of the 8000+ MOTHER TONGUE languages on earth (PrayOMT.org). A person's mother tongue is the language that speaks straight to their heart, making this very important. The goal is to fulfill Jesus' prayer for God's will to be done "on earth as it is in heaven" (Matthew 6:10). And what is being done in heaven? According to Revelation 7:9, there is "a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people, and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb.'"

In his final days, though his body was riddled with cancer, God energized Loren to "Zoom" with tens of thousands on every continent to share this passion (PrayOMT.com). Just as he showed people how to live "full on" for Jesus, he also modeled how to faithfully finish the race God has set before each one of us. These were precious days of impartation into and prayer over the next generation and the next, who responded with an emphatic "yes - we accept and will carry out the call."