Winter grew up in the Los Angeles area. His father, Hugo, was a self-trained engineer who ended up leading a division of the L.A. planning department with 1,200 engineers under his leadership and was instrumental in the development of the greater L.A. Freeway system. When World War II broke out, Ralph was too young to enlist, so he studied for just two and a half years at
Caltech and earned his
B.S. degree, in order to join the
U.S. Navy's pilot training program. Before he finished that training, the war ended and he was discharged, but his service in the Navy helped pay for his further education. He then went on to earn his
MA at
Columbia University, and
PhD at
Cornell University, and then a
B.Div. at
Princeton Theological Seminary. With childhood friend Dan Fuller (son of revival preacher Charles E. Fuller), he also studied at
Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, Calif., the first semester the school was open in 1947. He would later teach there. Winter was one of the
Donald McGavran, the founding Dean of the Mission School, early faculty hires. It was during Ralph’s era at
Fuller Theological Seminary that he created the E-Scale evangelism which was one of his greatest contributions to global missions as this change the missionary outlook from focusing on countries to people - groups within nation-states. In 1951, Winter married his first wife, Roberta Helm, with whom he would later establish the USCWM in Pasadena. The couple, along with their four young daughters, served as Presbyterian missionaries to Guatemala from 1956 to 1966. It was in Guatemala where Winter (with Paul Emery and others) helped further the idea of getting theological training to rural pastors.
Theological Education by Extension (TEE) program is the precursor for modern-day theological
distance education programs and the multi-campus models used by schools and
seminaries today. Winter and later Ross Kinsler, promoted TEE globally. The idea behind TEE was to make it easier for local church leaders to learn and be
ordained as
ministers without relocating them and their families for years to the capital city to attend seminary. These students could continue their
ministry while studying at
extension campuses near their
town or
village. Then, once a month, they would go to the seminary in the capital city to study. The Theological Education by Extension idea inspired a movement and soon similar programs were replicated around the world. Although many credit him for the TEE idea, Winter points to missionary
James Emery, who had served in Guatemala before him, for conceiving the idea upon which he built.
Donald McGavran at Fuller Theological Seminary's School of World Mission was so impressed by the TEE education and other writings by Ralph, that he asked Winter to join the faculty with him and
Alan Tippett, a noted
anthropologist. Winter was a
professor at Fuller from 1966 to 1976. During this time, Winter taught more than a thousand missionaries who he said helped him learn about the global mission fields. It was also in these years that he founded the
William Carey Library, (now, William Carey Publishing) which publishes and distributes mission materials; co-founded the
American Society of Missiology; launched what is now the Perspectives Study Program (first called the Summer Institute of International Studies); and presented the idea of the "hidden peoples," which later became synonymous with the phrase "unreached peoples," at the 1974 Lausanne Congress in Switzerland. ==Later life and works==