Tippett was an Australian
missionary to the
Fiji Islands for more than 20 years, and an academic in the
United States. Born 9 November 1911 in
St Arnaud, Victoria, Alan Tippett was the son of William Tippett, a
Methodist pastor from a family with a long tradition of
Wesleyan involvement. He graduated from the
University of Melbourne in 1934 and the
Methodist Church Training College in 1935. He was
ordained in 1938 and worked in churches in
Tasmania and
Victoria. With his young family, he worked as a
missionary with the
Fijian Methodist Church from 1941 to 1961. He was a professor at
Northwest Christian College,
Eugene, Oregon between 1961 and 1964. He earned his
Ph.D. in
anthropology at the
University of Oregon in 1964 and taught part-time in the Institute of Church Growth,
Fuller Theological Seminary. Tippett also served as
professor of
Missionary Anthropology at Fuller Theological Seminary's School of World Mission in
Pasadena, California. In the spring of 1965, an invitation was extended to him and
Donald McGavran to move the Institute of Church Growth to Pasadena, where the school would become another
satellite school to the
Fuller Theological Seminary. The faculty was expanded to include such
scholars as
Ralph D. Winter in
history,
Arthur Glasser in
theology,
Charles H. Kraft to join Tippett in anthropology, and
C. Peter Wagner in
church growth. As church growth ideas matured, they were incorporated by
McGavran into the basic textbook of the movement, Understanding Church Growth (Eerdmans), published in 1970. Tippett authored over 500 pieces of literary work as part of his contributions to missions and he helped pioneer the theory as well as practice of missiological anthropology. In 1977 he retired to
Canberra, Australia, where he died 16 September 1988. ==Books==