Listen Attentively. Pray Intensely. Act Fiercely.

As 2025 closes, its beginning still feels remarkably vivid: We all continue to carry many of the same griefs with which this year began – war, division, instability, and uncertainty.

At Scholar Leaders, we are remembering how, in February of this year, our board heard updates from our friends in Palestine and Ukraine. After they spoke to us, Dr. Tite Tiénou, our board chair, made a sobering call to action: 

“We need to listen attentively, pray intensely for courage, and act fiercely.”

Dr. Tiénou has embodied this call throughout his ministry across Africa and the United States. When asked about his journey, he describes himself as a “reluctant person in God’s work.” 

As a young man, Dr. Tiénou had his heart set on being a primary school teacher, so much so that he earned his teaching certificate at 17 years old. But the next year, everything changed. 

At a youth camp in 1967, he responded to an altar call that posed a single question: “Are you committing your life to serve God?” That moment set him on a path he never imagined. He went on to study at Nyack College in New York, the Faculté Libre de Théologie Evangelique in Vaux-sur-Seine, France, and Fuller Theological Seminary in California. 

In 1971, he began serving as a pastor in Bobo-Dioulasso, Burkina Faso. By 1976, he had cofounded the Maranatha Institute, stepping into theological education not as an end in itself but as a means to serve the Church. He went on to teach at Alliance Theological Seminary and serve as founding president and dean of Faculté de Théologie Évangélique de l’Alliance Chrétienne in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire.

Today, Dr. Tiénou holds the Tite Tiénou Chair of Global Theology and World Christianity at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, where he serves as Research Professor of Theology of Mission and Dean Emeritus.

Yet through it all, his vision has remained clear: “My call is to the Church, not to theological education. And theological education’s purpose is to serve the goals of God’s Church [….] Jesus said ‘I will build my Church,’ not ‘I will build my seminary’.”

For nearly 25 years, serving on Scholar Leaders’ board, Dr. Tiénou has brought this same vision to everything we do as we cultivate theological leaders for the global Church – women and men who will listen attentively to their communities, pray intensely for courage under fire, and act fiercely for Christ’s Church around the world.

This is the vision in which we are asking you to invest as 2025 comes to a close.

When you give to Scholar Leaders, you are joining Dr. Tiénou’s call to action. You are supporting emerging leaders from the Majority World who are being trained not just to think deeply but to serve faithfully in contexts that desperately need them – places marked by conflict, displacement, and instability, yes, but also by hope, resilience, and the unstoppable advance of God’s kingdom.