Dr. Bruce Winston lecturing 45 new PhD candidates

From August 4th to 14th, 2004, I am at Regent University in Virginia Beach, starting a PhD in Organizational Leadership. I will be taking the program year-round for four years, and study by distance education. Here are my thoughts about what this means to me.  

1. As you begin this program, what is the overall goal you have for your life?

My life goal is to call forth the early Christians of the third millennium, with a full integrated faith and vision for societal transformation. I see the transition of faith to the post-modern age as significant as the transition that the early church experienced from Jewish to Gentile Christianity. I want to bring to bear all the missiological, educational, leadership skills I can muster to insure that this transition gives birth to a church that is faithful to its to first-century roots, but open to its 21st-century fruits.

2. What is your background; including family, friends, community and church?

I have been married 26 years to Olga Maria Aleu Fontela, from Cuba. She has been the emotional sparkplug of my life, I have been her rudder. We have two children, David, now 20 and Christine 18. This past fall was their first semesters at college. Christine leads with her head, like me, David with his heart, like his mom. Our friends are a mix between colleagues in Christian ministries and local parents we met while raising our kids. My church, Chapel of our Savior is an Episcopal parish, high church in form, but very relational, with lots of intelligent, but ordinary people. It keeps us grounded in the gospel. Over the past thirty years, I have been a member in various church fellowships, including Bible churches, American Baptist churches, Pentecostal-Charismatic churches, so I value the whole spectrum of the American Christianity.

3. What are your committments to a Christ-centered educational philosophy?

I am committed to the integration of faith and learning, in all disciplines, whether the humanities and sciences. I respect Regent's commitment to serving the evangelical movement by empowering professional and integral leaders, who are conversant with the great issues of their day, and the great conversation of civilization.

4. What are your academic and professional goals?

My goal is to receive an earned PhD in Organizational Leadership and use it to forward the teaching of foresight in faith-based institutions, both formal and non-formal. Futures, as a field and knowledge base has been very well developed by its first and second generation practitioners. The need now is for application to organizational contexts of all kinds, in entrepreneurial, in non-profits, and in civic contexts.

5. What are your academic and educational goals following your time at Regent University?

As I reach my mid-50s, I would like to add various partners to my consulting practice to have more time to teach at the graduate level. I would also like to be involved in institutional development, creating distance education degrees in foresight studies, global studies, transformation studies and instructional design.
 
6. Summarize the most significant experiences and achievements of your professional life?

a. Creating the Perspectives Study Program: From 1979 to 1986, I created the popular adult mission study class called, "Perspectives." Today it enrolls more than 3,000 students a year, in the U.S. and around the world.

b. Creating Jesus' 2,000th bimillennial: From 1993 to 2000, I created the mind-space for evangelicals to mark Christ's 2,000th jubilee, internationally and nationally. This was intensely satisfying to see how worship, aesthetics, history, culture and witness could be used to bring people together. It was also sobering to see how misguided apocalypticism undercut the church's influence in society.

c. Creating the Christian Futures Network. From 1999 onward, I created a professional development forum of leaders focused on enlarging the forward view of faith. The year 2003-2004 was our most fruitful year, and now I am enjoying leading "Future Proof Your Ministry" workshops.

7. What are your greatest strengths, interests and abilities and how do they relate to your professional goals?

My greatest strength is my ability to learn new things and to act on my conviction that God is not just behind us, but before us. My secondary strength is organizing through technology, knowing how to create start-up projects, endeavors, consultations or strategic alliances that work for everyone involved.