Overview and History of Kairos

The Kairos Course began in the Philippines in 1994. It was known then as the CWMC (Condensed World Mission Course).

In 1989 and 1990 Mission Awareness Conferences were conducted in the southern Philippines to help focus the Filipino Church’s attention on the millions of individuals in unreached people groups within the country. The response to this challenge was overwhelming. The lack of education and understanding in cross-cultural missions in general, however was a major obstacle. Foreign missionaries had failed, by and large, to teach on cross-cultural mission and for the need of the Church to reach out to near-neighbour unreached peoples.

To address this need for education, Living Springs International introduced a course in mission using Dr Jonathan Lewis’ three-volume, ‘World Mission Book’ as a basis. Dr Lewis’ material focused on the four major areas of mission concern – Biblical, Historical, Strategic and Cultural. These four areas and much of the material used by Lewis were taken from Perspectives on the World Christian Movement produced by the Institute for International Studies at the US Center for World Mission. Based on Lewis’ material a three week course which also included videos, additional teaching and group interaction was developed.