ScholarLeaders International exists to encourage and enable Christian theological leaders from the Majority World for the Global Church.
What we do…
Encourage and enable Christian theological leaders from the Majority World – Africa, Asia, Central and Eastern Europe, Latin America, and the Middle East – for the Global Church.
- We support leaders during their advanced education and help them return home to serve as faculty and as school executives, among other roles (LeaderStudies).
- We guide executives at Majority World schools to clarify their unique missions and to plan for the future so that they can more effectively train pastors, teachers, evangelists, activists, and missional entrepreneurs for the Church (Vital SustainAbility Initiative).
- We engage Majority World concerns and pursue some that are particularly strategic, especially in religions and in support of women in theological leadership (Catalytic Ventures).
- We share knowledge across contexts (InSights, including the Journal for Global Theological Education and ScholarLeader of the Year).
How we do it…
Concentrate on clients, listening, strategy, and the Church with cooperation and efficiency.
- We serve leaders of the Majority World Church as clients, helping them to enhance their abilities to serve Christ: teachers form others for the Church; executives guide institutions that advance the Kingdom; prophets challenge the people of God and the societies in which they live; and entrepreneurs initiate new ways to extend the Gospel.
- We listen carefully to discern contextual challenges and how we might bless local ministries.
- We emphasize strategy, the development and placement of resources, which local leaders employ to build the Church. We thereby cultivate relationships of interdependency rather than dependency.
- We are part of the Church, so we work from within the Church on behalf of the Church. We hope that Jesus’s project is at the center of everything we do.
- We cooperate with partners, including schools and leaders, Overseas Council, Theological Book Network, the Langham Partnership, and other global ministries. Foundation executives and donors contribute ideas. Faculty at Fuller Theological Seminary and Trinity Evangelical Divinity School have been instrumental guides. We work with many denominations.
- We are efficient. Our diverse staff is small and dispersed yet well-connected.
Why we do it…
Jesus has a project: to redeem all that is redeemable as He establishes His Kingdom. We wish to be part of His project.
- We are grateful to be in Jesus’s adopted family, His Church, His vehicle for sharing His Good News.
- We support wise and passionate local leaders who pursue priorities inspired by sound Biblical theology applied in their specific contexts.
- We are concerned for justice, so we focus where resources are most needed, the often-growing and frequently-challenged Majority World Church.
- We believe that there is one Church, united in joy and in suffering, so we stand with and learn from sisters and brothers who experience poverty, oppression, corruption, health crises, and armed conflicts.
Why our community of support is growing…
- We had a good start in 1983, over 35 years ago, when our founders – Steve Hayner, Mark Labberton, and Tom Cooper – were inspired by John Stott’s conviction that our Majority World sisters and brothers must have opportunities to equip themselves and assume church leadership in their homelands.
- We have expanded steadily, validating and improving our programs with clients.
- We are guided by a board characterized by long-term commitments and generosity.
- We remain true to our statement of faith. Read it here.
- We operate in a responsible and transparent manner as recognized by GuideStar and Excellence in Giving. View our EIG report here.
ScholarLeaders International is a 501(c)3 not-for-profit ministry.
ScholarLeaders International is the name taken in 2010 by Christian International Scholarship Foundation (CISF), founded 1983.