Loren Cunningham is the Founder of Youth With A Mission (YWAM), an ever-expanding global “family of ministries” born in 1960 which has reached into every nation on earth (www.ywam.org). As a missions movement, YWAM encompasses evangelism, training and mercy ministries. It is manned by more than 20,000 full-time staff from 200+ countries and a wide variety of denominations and Christian traditions who serve at more than 2,000 YWAM locations in 191 nations. Some five million participants in YWAM programs as students, short-term volunteers and full-time staff have served with YWAM since its inception.

Loren is also the Co-Founder and International Chancellor of the University of the Nations (UofN), a global ministry of YWAM (www.uofn.edu). Since the university was established in 1978, the UofN has grown to offer more than 500 different kinds of courses and hundreds of seminars (some of which are offered in 97 languages), held at more than 600 locations/campuses in 160 countries. Hundreds of thousands of students have registered within the global UofN system and have taken at least a Discipleship Training School (DTS), the entry course and prerequisite for all other UofN courses, for pursuing UofN associates, bachelors or masters degrees, and/or for becoming YWAM staff. UofN is also initiating certificate courses and online e-courses.

Together with his wife, Darlene, Loren’s ministry partner from the beginning of YWAM and UofN, he currently leads the University of the Nations campus in Kona, Hawaii (www.uofnkona.edu). By 1999, Loren had personally gone to every sovereign nation on earth, all dependent countries, and more than 100 territories and islands for the sake of Christ and the Great Commission. This has given him valuable insights into global trends and uniquely prepares him to share God’s strategies for world evangelism. His wisdom, experience, leadership understanding and call to build bridges of unity within the body of Christ have given him opportunity to speak publicly to live audiences from a few to more than a million people gathered in one location. He usually ministers on all six continents each year.

Since 1960 Loren, joining with many other global leaders, has carried a burden to make the Bible accessible to every person on earth in their mother tongue by 2033, thereby ending Bible poverty worldwide. Wherever the Bible goes, the Spirit of God brings transformation! In recent years, he has met with hundreds of influential leaders in evangelical, charismatic and Pentecostal denominations, as well as those leading the oldest Christian traditions, to invite their partnership in this cause. Loren’s personal goal is to make at least an oral translation of Scripture available to the 1,869 totally Bible-less languages by 2020. He is actively recruiting more than one million Christians that will sign a pledge to help eradicate Bible poverty by praying and serving as the Holy Spirit leads them (www.endbiblepovertynow.com).

Born in Taft, California, Loren’s family heritage is rich with generations of Christian ministers. His educational background includes three Bachelor degrees, a Master of Science in Administration of Education, and three Honorary Doctorates. Loren is the author of five books: Is That Really You, God? (translated into more than 130 languages), Making Jesus Lord, Daring to Live on the Edge, Why Not Women? and The Book that Transforms Nations—the Power of the Bible to Change any Country. (August 2015)