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CWS Leadership Development Forum provides "home base" for WCC Scholars
Forum members John Backer, Garland Pierce, Deborah DeWinter, Franklin Ishida, Renemsongla Ozukum and Rita M. Pullium were joined by CWS Executive Director John McCullough at their Dec. 05 meeting.
Photo: Carol Fouke-Mpoyo
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Each year for 60 years, the Church World Service Leadership Development program has recruited U.S. seminaries to give full scholarships to World Council of Churches Scholars – graduate students from around the world. Then it has served as a "home base" for the scholars, providing moral support during their stay and connecting them to each other, building a network among these emerging leaders of the global church.
The leadership development program was founded in 1946 as the Ecumenical Scholarship Exchange of Church World Service. Later it morphed into the National Council of Churches' Division of Overseas Ministries Leadership Development Program. Now, as the CWS Leadership Development Forum, it is among CWS's several issues- and geographic-area forums.
Most forum members are representatives of agencies that also grant scholarships and/or otherwise support development of leadership for "any work that the church does," said the forum's chairperson, Rev. Franklin Ishida, Director for Leadership Development, Program Unit for Global Mission, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, Chicago, Ill. "That includes theology but also development, management, health, and education, to name a few."
John Backer, an employee of the CWS Immigration and Refugee Program, staffs the CWS Leadership Development Forum and, for the past 31 years, has served as the National Correspondent of the WCC Scholarship Program.
Mr. Backer explained that, each year, national committees in countries around the world recommend graduate students for WCC scholarships, forwarding the students' applications to WCC headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, for review.
Most of the students already have been accepted by an institution of higher or continuing education, and WCC Scholars are studying in all regions of the world: Africa, Europe, North America, Latin America, the Caribbean, Asia, the Pacific, and the Middle East. The WCC proposes certain students for theological study in the United States, and it is through the CWS Leadership Development Forum that placements for the scholars are secured.
Worldwide this year, there are 370 WCC Scholars in all. Over the past 60 years, more than 10,000 students have received WCC scholarships for studies worldwide.
In 2005-6, nine scholars from seven countries are studying at seven U.S. seminaries. Three are from Kenya, and the others are from Haiti; Nagaland, India; the Philippines; Serbia-Montenegro; Uganda; and Zambia.
Among them is Renemsongla Ozukum, a Baptist from Nagaland, India, and a masters student in Ecumenics at Union Theological Seminary in New York City. From 2003 to 2005, she studied at Lexington Theological Seminary in Lexington, Ky.
Ozukum joined the CWS Leadership Development Forum for its 2005 annual meeting, on December 9 at CWS's New York City offices. The forum’s value, she said, "is not simply giving me a scholarship. It's giving me a source of strength and inspiration personally to continue my journey of peace and justice ministry."
In the midst of her studies, Ozukum also has plunged herself into U.S. church life, helping with her congregation's women to women ministry, children's ministry, and choir. She took part in a Habitat for Humanity "build" in Lexington, Florida, and delivered a "Living Letter" at a WCC U.S. Conference annual meeting.
There, "Ren [Ozukum] pled with the United States to be a source of peacemaking now, just as American Baptist missionaries from the United States brought India another way of being through the Christ child," said Rev. Deborah DeWinter, WCC Program Executive for the United States, based in New York City. "At that meeting, we focused on Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and his philosophy of non-violence, which led Ren to write a thesis on its applications by the Naga Church."
"The scholars who come for training also bring something to the hosting institution and to the U.S. churches," Rev. Ishida said. "From Ren, we've experienced another part of the Indian subcontinent, and received her expressions of her faith journey." Now the CWS Leadership Development Forum has enlisted Ozukum to help plan the WCC scholars' annual conference, April 7-9, 2006, at Lexington Theological Seminary.
The forum also is an important network for participants themselves, said Dr. Rita M. Pullium, Vice President of the United Board for Christian Higher Education in Asia, based in New York City. "It's a place for sharing common goals and issues."
In addition to Rev. Ishida, Dr. Pullium, Rev. DeWinter, and CWS's Backer, the CWS Leadership Development Forum includes Br. James E. Teets, the Episcopal Church; Ms. Lisa Katzenstein, General Board of Global Ministries, United Methodist Church; Rev. Garland Pierce, National Council of Churches USA, and a representative from the Presbyterian Church (USA).
That today's WCC Scholars are future leaders of the global church was illustrated by chance later on Dec. 9, the same day as the CWS Leadership Development Forum met. Stopping by CWS's offices was Rev. Didier Crouzet, responsible for international relations for the French Reformed Church. He was a WCC Scholar at the Pacific School of Religion in 1979-80.
John Backer said the forum is in the process of seeking U.S. seminary placements for 10 WCC applicants for 2006-7.
Media Contact:
Lesley Crosson, CWS/New York, 212-870-2676;
Jan Dragin, 781-925-1526;
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