Founding in Wartime Los Angeles

On January 23, 1943, New Tribes Mission was incorporated in Los Angeles, California, under the leadership of Paul W. Fleming. While nations were locked in World War II, this quiet legal step gave durable form to a calling that had been growing in Fleming’s heart: that tribal and unreached peoples should hear the gospel in their own language, and that local churches should be planted where Christ had not been named. Incorporation did not create the vision; it anchored it, providing structure for sending, training, accountability, and long-term perseverance.

Paul W. Fleming and a Burden from the Lord

Fleming’s leadership reflected a conviction that the Great Commission is not limited by distance, danger, or difficulty. “Therefore go and make disciples of all nations…teaching them to obey all that I have commanded you,” Jesus said, “And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age” (Matthew 28:19–20). In days when many families were already sacrificing sons and resources for the war effort, supporting missionaries to remote peoples required a different kind of courage—steady, prayerful, and often unseen.

Faith, Sacrifice, and Open Doors

Early workers depended upon the Lord for personnel, finances, and access to isolated regions. The mission’s approach emphasized learning languages and cultures, translating Scripture faithfully, and teaching the whole counsel of God so that churches could stand on their own. This answered a pressing spiritual need described by Paul: “How can they believe in the One of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone to preach?” (Romans 10:14). The heroism here was not only in risk and travel, but in patient years of study, humble service, and endurance through illness, isolation, and opposition.

Growing Ministry: Aviation, Translation, and Literature

From those beginnings, New Tribes Mission expanded to include missionary aviation to reach remote airstrips, Bible translation for minority languages, church planting rooted in local leadership, and the production and distribution of Christian literature. These efforts were never ends in themselves, but practical instruments for the advance of Christ’s kingdom—so that people once considered unreachable could hear God’s Word clearly, gather as worshiping communities, and send their own witnesses outward in faith.