Professor to Direct Christian Leadership

A long-anticipated transition is taking place in Christian Leadership Ministries: a professor will soon step in to direct this expanding ministry to university faculty. Stan Oakes, director of CLM since its inception in 1980, is leaving Christian Leadership and handing over the direction of the ministry to Dr. Walter Bradley, currently a professor of mechanical engineering at Texas A&M University.

Even when the first full-time staff met to map out the direction of Christian Leadership, they understood that "Campus Crusade for Christ, not being a part of the university, works outside the confines of the campus," Stan said.

"From the beginning we were thinking about and praying for a professor to lead this ministry of Campus Crusade to college and university professors, staff and administrators.

"So the seeds to move Walter and Ann Bradley into this position were sown 17 years ago," he added. "The idea that we work toward raising up leadership from within a particular culture to reach that culture for Christ is a very natural part of the movement of Campus Crusade for Christ."

Stan Oakes and his wife, Ginger, will be leaving Christian Leadership to devote their energy to helping Campus Crusade start the International Leadership University. The ILU will formally educate students around the world in a liberal arts education and instruct them in evangelism and discipleship. While the ILU will have resident campuses, it will also incorporate current technology to offer affordable education to future leaders around the world.

"Although I haven't said much about it over the past two decades," Stan admits, "I've always been interested in establishing a think tank, college or prep school. Since, I believe, educational quality has suffered with the rise of political correctness, students are not prepared to write, speak, and think based upon a biblical worldview."

Stan explains that there are about 1,920 hours in an undergraduate education. "I believe we need that amount of time to build the quality leaders that the world needs, both intellectually and in practical experience. Dr. Bill Bright, president of Campus Crusade for Christ, asked me to [direct ILU] as a logical extension of his own long-held vision for a university."

A Two-year Transition

As Stan steps down, Walter Bradley will make a two-year transition from his current position at Texas A&M to directing CLM. Mike Duggins, who has been serving as the field ministry director and the associate national director under Stan, will assume the position of national director in the interim.

"Walter's life has inspired me for the past 16 years as I've sought to find and build leaders among Christian faculty on campuses throughout Texas and the Southwest," Mike said.

"It will be a joy to work more closely with Walter as he becomes our CLM national director," he continued.

"Walter will provide strategic direction, vision, and encouragement to professors and CLM staff while I continue to manage the day-to-day activities of the ministry and ensure that we are fulfilling our mission."

Walter is no stranger to Christian Leadership Ministries. In fact, he devoted his life and career to reaching higher education for Christ through professors before he had even met a Christian professor himself.

"When I received my Ph.D. in 1968 . . . I had been through seven years' worth of university education at the University of Texas and had never once met a Christian faculty member that was identified as such," Walter recalled. "But I found many cases of those who were hostile to believers and ridiculed the Christian faith."

The Two-year Experiment

Walter decided to pursue a "two-year experiment" in an academic career to discover for himself whether a platform for Christian influence was possible in that environment. As a teaching assistant, Bradley had already begun integrating his faith with his teaching and with identifying himself as a Christian in class and had seen promising results.

"At the end of our two years at the Colorado School of Mines we really were quite amazed," Walter confessed. "We quickly became persuaded that the opportunities a faculty member has to influence students for Christ is quite enormous."

The two-year experiment turned into 30 years as Walter and Ann saw success in ministry at the Colorado School of Mines and then again at Texas A&M University.

But even from the beginning, the Bradleys' goal was much larger than merely having a personal ministry in higher education.

"We have found a great deal of satisfaction in the opportunities for immediate direct personal ministry," Walter reflected. "But now we have the opportunity to complete what has been our goal and vision all along: to see Christ presented on the campus through the widespread influence of Christian faculty and to accelerate that movement through our direct involvement on a full-time basis.

"We've had our 'internship,' so to speak; we've spent 30 years finding out exactly what's possible and how it might be done," he continued. "The benefit of going full-time [in ministry] is enhanced for us as we have 'paid our dues' in the trenches and worked at what we will encourage other faculty to do."

As Walter thinks back over his career, he can see how it has all helped lead to the decision to direct CLM. Specifically, he remembers when, in 1989, his dean asked him to consider taking on the role of department chairman of the mechanical engineering department (which was the largest ME department in the country at the time). It wasn't a role he aspired to or even considered up to that point, but he agreed to make a four-year commitment to the job.

"I had a faculty of 67, a staff of 40, around 1,500 students, and an annual budget from the state of about $4.5 million, which we supplemented with about $9 million worth of research. . . . I received four-years-worth of job-training practice that helped me develop some skills in leadership and management that I wouldn't have had otherwise.

"I would add that, in some ways, those were the most challenging and difficult years of all my 30 years together. At times I wondered why God had gotten me into that position. It's clear in hindsight that the Lord was not only using that as an opportunity for me to serve in our department, which I did (and saw it work better by incorporating Christian principles), but He was providing me with experience and preparation that will help me to be even more effective than I might have been in this new position with CLM."

Stan Oakes has every confidence in Walter's ability to direct Christian Leadership. He recalls that Walter and Ann were one of two couples CLM originally used as models for ministry among faculty.

"In the beginning we asked ourselves the question, do we want to come up with our own ideas of how a Christian professor ought to live," Stan said, "or should we find professors who are already having a powerful influence on the campus and provide them as models to other professors?

"We chose the second option; Rae and Peggy Mellichamp and the Bradleys were those first model couples. Now thousands of professors around the world look to them as models of how to attractively and courageously talk about Christ in the some-what hostile environment of the modern university.

"It was time for someone else to take over Christian Leadership; it was time for a professor. This step will take CLM to the next level. I could have gone on forever [as the director], but would I be accomplishing what God wants if I created a situation in which professors weren't reaching out and leading the ministry to other faculty? It is their university, after all, and they are the ones who are going to be held accountable for it."

A Man with a Vision