Who Will Lead the Global Church?

Situation:

Today about 70% of Christians live in Africa, Asia and Latin America, up from about 10% only a century ago.
The world center for the church has shifted from Europe and America to majority world countries. People in these countries often face life-challenges quite different from those in the West: extremes of poverty and wealth, corrupt and often-oppressive governments, high rates of illiteracy, a history of tribal practices and growth of aggressive, sometimes-militant religious fundamentalism.
There is an extreme shortage of well-educated Christian leaders. Pastors typically lead several churches, but often have only grade-school education and little formal Christian training.
The new churches need Christian literature in native languages to address the unique issues of their particular culture. Seminaries and Bible schools are being developed, but they are too few and not yet ready to train enough pastors, educators, authors and leaders.

Strategy:

Focus on the doctoral level. This level of education is essential to filling the need for seminary founders, leaders and faculty as well as for founders and leaders of denominations and some relief organizations. These highly-educated leaders will also be authors of much-needed culturally-relevant Christian literature.[*]
Select scholar-leaders from regions with the greatest need. We support proven leaders from majority countries across the globe, with priority given to China, Africa and Brazil.
Partner with seminaries in developing nations for faculty development. CISF has carefully selected schools which we believe effectively train pastors. Some will develop accredited, high-quality, in-country PhD programs.
Support scholars for education at in-context schools when possible. While most doctoral students must still study in the West, advantages to studying near home are many. The scholar can work in his/her native language, family disruption is reduced and local research facilitated. Costs are also generally lower.

Results:

CISF has remarkable impact, huge leverage—and is growing rapidly. Since CISF was founded nearly 25 years ago, we have sponsored over 150 scholar-leaders. As of August 2007:

86 CISF alumni have graduated, returned home, currently hold significant leadership positions and are involved in important work in their homeland.
CISF currently sponsors 38 scholars at schools in 6 countries on 4 continents.
Only eight of our students graduated but chose not to return. They are currently repaying their scholarships to us.
Three of our past students have plans that are not yet defined: they are waiting to return; finishing their degree but no longer supported by CISF; or face other unique circumstances.
Two of our students were unable to finish their degree but have returned to ministry at home.
Given that only about half of those who embark on PhD studies ever earn their degree, we believe these results show the strength of our students.

CISF scholar-leaders now impact millions of people in 36 countries.

“CISF focuses on regions and countries with the greatest need for scholar-leaders: Mainland China, Sub-Saharan Africa, Brazil and other parts of Latin America. In these areas there is a pressing need for an additional four hundred well-educated leaders. We are working with seminaries, universities and other supportive organizations to fill that need. The challenge is daunting but can be met.” Larry Smith, CISF Board Member

[*] Almost all CISF scholars study at the PhD level. We typically sponsor one master-level student at Regent College, and several of these have gone on to PhD programs. For China we will support master-level scholars as we have been unable to find many leaders ready for PhD-level work.