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Loren Duane Cunningham (1935—2023) was an American Assemblies of God (AG) evangelist and missionary whose charismatic vision helped launch millions of young people into short- and long-term missions. In 1965, after identifying a great need to streamline and decentralize the traditional method of training and commissioning missionaries, Cunningham started Youth With A Mission (YWAM). This interdenominational missions organization now operates thousands of bases worldwide.
Loren Cunningham was born in Taft, California, to Thomas and Jewell Cunningham, both ordained AG ministers and descended from families of Pentecostal evangelists. When Loren’s parents were newlyweds, they lived in their car and preached on the streets of Tyler, Texas. As their family grew, the couple continued traveling as itinerant preachers and serving as pastors in small churches in the southwest United States. As parents, they modeled for Loren and his two siblings what it means to listen to God’s voice, follow His call, and put aside personal comfort for the gospel’s sake.
Loren was only six years old when God began to speak to him. By 13, he knew God had called him into full-time ministry.
At 18, Cunningham went on his first short-term mission trip to Mexico, evangelizing on the streets and witnessing door to door. Although he returned home sick with dysentery, he celebrated the fact that 20 people had knelt in the streets to accept Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. The following year, Loren enrolled at Central Bible College, an AG school in Springfield, Missouri. He also joined three other students to form a gospel music quartet called the Liberators. The group traveled the country, singing and preaching.
In 1956, on a trip to the Bahamas, Loren experienced a late-night vision that would direct the course of his future. He saw wave after wave of young people obeying the Great Commission, taking the love of Christ and the gospel message into every nation of the world. Loren was only 20 then, and it took him a while to understand the vision and what God was calling him to do. At first, he thought he was supposed to teach and train missionaries. So, after graduating from Bible college in 1957 with Bible studies and Christian education degrees, he enrolled at the University of Southern California to earn a master’s degree in education.
Cunningham’s vision began to clarify through his ministry with the youth at the Assemblies of God in Southern California. He saw many young Christians responding enthusiastically to the challenging call of world missions. But there was nothing for them to do and no way to go without several years of formal training and education. Cunningham believed there had to be a better way to harness their motivation and send them out while they still possessed youthful zeal.
In 1960, Loren Cunningham began rethinking his denomination’s current mission strategy, experimenting with a new short-term outreach model. He organized a large-scale spring break project, taking around one hundred young people to share the gospel in Hawaii. The students had to raise their own support or pay their way. After that, Cunningham expanded his sights to numerous locations around the globe. However, his AG leaders felt the undertaking was too ambitious, prompting Loren to set out on his own. The result was the founding of YWAM (pronounced why-wham) in 1961.
Loren struggled in the first few years, managing to send only a handful of young people on short-term trips. That changed in 1963 when he married Darlene Joy Scratch, a young woman who shared his passion for cross-cultural ministry.
Soon, YWAM was sending out hundreds of students through a “Summer of Service” program. They had to raise their own funds, and the work was challenging. But, the bigger the challenge, the more youths were drawn to it. These young believers were learning to take leaps of faith and let God work out the details.
By 1969, YWAM had launched a training school for its missionaries that ultimately became the University of the Nations in 1988. This international missionary preparation school now operates over 800 campuses in 163 countries, training in evangelism, linguistics and languages, sports and fitness, science, education, art, technology, and communications. YWAM also offers a six-month Discipleship Training School (DTS) that involves classroom learning, small group activities, personal reflection, practical service, and community living. The outreach phase of training allows students to discover their abilities and get real-world experience serving in a foreign mission field.
In 1981, YWAM established Frontier Missions to focus on unreached peoples by equipping and sending out workers into the world’s most restricted and remote areas. YWAM is also responsible for launching a medical relief ministry called Mercy Ships (in 1979), which became a separate ministry in 2003.
Loren Cunningham wrote several missions books, including Is That Really You, God? (1984), Daring to Live on the Edge (1991), Why Not Women? (2000), The Book That Transforms Nations (2007), and No Boundaries (2023). He was awarded three honorary doctorates.
Over the years, YWAM has faced criticism from many of its former missionaries, including accusations of abuse against several base leaders. As a result, in 2001, Loren Cunningham and other YWAM leaders began reevaluating and changing the organization’s leadership standard to reflect the New Testament qualifications of an elder. The process was solidified in 2013 with the establishment of an eldership model of leadership.
Today, YWAM has more than 20,000 full-time workers in some 2,000 locations in approximately 200 nations. The total number of young people the organization has sent since its inception is greater than 5 million (YWAM gave up counting in 2010).
When Loren Cunningham visited Libya in 1999, he became the first person to minister in every sovereign nation and dependent country in the world, including more than one hundred islands and independent territories. Cunningham was a global visionary and influencer who mobilized one of history’s most significant mission movements. Loren and his lifelong ministry partner and wife, Darlene, had two children, Karen and David. They lived in Kailua-Kona, Hawaii, where Loren died on October 6, 2023, at age 88.
