Youth With A Mission (YWAM) Founder, Loren Cunningham, Has Passed Away

Loren Cunningham, the missionary founder of the global Christian missionary organization YWAM, passed away on October 6 at 88.

Founded in 1960, YWAM’s mission is to “know God and make Him known.” It is an interdenominational and non-profit organization that operates in over 180 countries, pioneering short-term missions with a heavy charismatic emphasis.

According to a press release about his death: “Loren was the first person in history to visit every nation, all dependent countries, and over 100 territories and islands, with the intention to share God’s love and help complete Christ’s Great Commission. Loren empowered youth to serve globally on short-term, unsalaried missions, revolutionizing missionary paradigms, which led to the moniker “The De-Regulator of Missions.”

While YWAM has had surprisingly few public scandals over the decades, it was not without its critics. Ministry Watch explains:

(It comprises of) some 20,000 workers in hundreds of independent ministries operating from some 1,000 bases in about 200 countries. Over the years, some four million people have been through YWAM’s 12-week Discipleship Training School, the first step in working with the organization, which pays no salaries.
But unlike other evangelical ministries and mission agencies, YWAM isn’t incorporated and lacks a central organization or headquarters. It has no president, board of directors, fundraising department, or annual reports. It has no communications team to gather and convey information to donors or the media, hence the frequent use of words like “some” in the paragraph above.

…YWAM is dynamic, but is it effective? No one knows, because YWAM’s non-structured structure takes opaqueness and inscrutability to new and unprecedented levels.
No one tracks all of the independent ministries. No one has solid numbers on how many ministries there are, how much money they raise, how many workers they support, what they do, or how successful they are at carrying out their missions. Parents and relatives even have difficulty tracking down loved ones working with YWAM

‘Loren is survived by his beloved wife, Darlene Joy Scratch-Cunningham; his daughter, Karen Joy Cunningham; his son, David Loren Cunningham (Judith Fitts-Cunningham); and three grandchildren, Madison Grace, Kenna Faith, and Liam Reed.’