WEC International Research Collection (Worldwide Evangelisation Crusade)

The WEC International Research Collection is the culmination of 40 years of collected articles and ephemera that formed the backbone of the Operation World information in the pre-internet era. There are several thousand spiral bound volumes covering 45 metres of shelf space with articles pasted into pages, organized in different categories within each country, with four editions per country dating from the 1970s into the early 21st century. The categories include a general information survey, political-economic news and analysis, religion and Christian surveys and information, church and Christian ministry, particularly mission activity, and finally ethnolinguistic people group information. The majority, but certainly not the entirety, is from Global North sources. The content compiled from newspapers, magazines and journals, in-house publications and even missionary prayer letters, is not fully comprehensive and is currently uncatalogued.

In 1964, Patrick Johnstone was working with Dorothea Mission in South Africa. The mission had a passion for prayer and world evangelism. While attending a prayer conference in Kenya, Patrick was asked to compile information for intentional and strategic prayer at the conference. Patrick produced a 30-page booklet covering 40 countries. In 1970 he was challenged to rewrite it, but believed that any future edition would need to cover the world. A new edition was printed in 1972.

The first globally-focused edition, Operation World , was published in 1974, and a further edition published by Operation Mobilisation in 1978. The most recent is from 2010, which is a complete update of the 21st century edition, released in 2001. Operation World has been translated into several other languages: German, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Korean, Chinese, Russian, Indonesian, and in part into Italian. The cumulative number of copies printed in all languages exceeds 2 million.

Jason Mandryk, Director, Editor, Operation World (6th-7th editions) and Patrick Johnstone, author Operation World 1st–6th editions, talk about the origin and development of Operation World . Operation World is widely regarded as 'the definitive prayer guide to every nation' and is the recipient of the ECPA Gold Medallion Award for Excellence in Evangelical Christian Literature.

Please consult the Visiting the Library webpage containing access information for external visitors. The archives and special collections are available for consultation by special appointment only. To arrange an appointment please email specialcollections@hope.ac.uk . Allow at least 24 hours notice. Please note that, in line with other archives and special collections, we require personal identification, and may, in some circumstances, ask you to provide references from your research supervisor or other suitable person or body. Please refer to the Access our Collections webpage for detailed information.

The list of countries and special topics is available to download from the Finding Aids webpage.

Uncatalogued

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To reproduce an image for publication, either for personal or commercial purposes, requires written consent from the rights holder. Please refer to the Special Collections webpages for detailed information on restrictions to access, digital reproduction and image licensing.