For the complete story about ICM’s founding and the first twenty years of our ministry, read The God Who Hung on the Cross, written by our founder, Dois Rosser, and popular Christian author, Ellen Vaughn. For a general summary of our founding, read more below.

Dois Rosser
Founder of ICM

History

Many evangelical Christians, seeing the extraordinary work that God is doing through ICM, have come to know ICM as one of the “the biggest-little ministries” in the world today.

International Cooperating Ministries (ICM) started out in1988 with the leadership of two men—one a Virginia businessman past the age of retirement, and the other a pastor with a rare degenerative spinal cord disease that eventually left him a bedfast quadriplegic. ICM has always maintained a humble and efficient approach to ministry. Yet, ICM has always strived to achieve a big impact through the leadership and vision of its founders.

Dois Rosser, the founder of ICM, traveled to India in 1986 and began to see the ministry opportunities available; this is what he saw:

"I began to have a vision that freed me from the paralysis that can come in the face of overwhelming need. I saw that, huge as India was, this was how whole nations could be changed—person by person, community by community, state by state. After all, through the centuries, the Gospel has always worked through the power of the One who transforms human lives—one by one by one."

By relying on simple business principles and a firm faith, Dois Rosser saw how God could quickly change individuals, villages, and nations. He turned this idea into an innovative approach to spreading the Gospel: International Cooperating Ministries.

The story of ICM, however, really began much earlier out of a relationship between Dois Rosser and Dick Woodward. Both men were able to use the skills and resources of the other to realize the wealth of opportunity for international ministry work.

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