OMSC Senior Mission Scholars
in Residence

Each semester the Overseas Ministries Study Center welcomes Senior Mission Scholars who provide leadership in OMSC’s Study Program and are available to residents for counsel regarding their own mission research interests. Seasoned scholarship, internationally renowned instructors, cutting edge seminars, and an ecclesiastically diverse resident community make OMSC the place to be for renewal of mission skills and vision.

Dr. John W. McNeill
Fall 2010

Dr. John W. McNeill, senior mission scholar in residence at OMSC for the fall 2010 semester, is professor of anthropology and intercultural studies at Providence College, Otterburne, Manitoba, Canada. Prior to joining the Providence faculty in 2000, he was an intercultural teacher and administrator with the University of the Nations, an affiliate of Youth With A Mission. Dr. McNeill trained leaders for nineteen years (1990– 2009) at the university’s center in Eastern Europe and Russia, and he held the same position in former East Germany (1989–92). A native of Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada, he discovered Russian literature as a child, and that appreciation led to his academic career. Dr. McNeill wrote a Ph.D. dissertation (Trinity International University, 1995) on “Western Saints in Holy Russia: Perceptions of Conversion and of Westerners Among Western Influenced Converts, Russian Church Converts, and Members of the Public in the Former USSR.” The ethnographic study was published as Western Saints in Holy Russia (Mandate Press, 2002). He is also author of “The Church and Western Ministry: What Russian Christians Think,”  in The East-West Church and Ministry Report (1994), and “Reclaiming Augustine for Christian Education,” in Christian Education Journal (2003).

Dr. Paul R. Gupta
Spring 2011

Dr. Paul R. Gupta, senior mission scholar in residence at OMSC for the spring 2011 semester, is president and director of the Hindustan Bible Institute and College, Kilpauk, Chennai, India, and president of HBI Global Partners, Forest, Virginia. A California native, Dr. Gupta is committed to equipping leaders for evangelism and church planting throughout India. After relocating to Chennai in 1983 to teach at the institute and college, he founded the Indian National Evangelical Fellowship and the Indian National Evangelical Church. The church implemented a strategy of recruiting missionaries to work throughout India, and today INEC counts 676 church planters who have started 4,264 churches with a membership of more than 250,000. In 1987 he hosted the first Consultation on National Strategy to consider ways of reaching unreached peoples of India. As a result, a movement called the Council on National Service was started with the vision of planting a church in every village, town, and city in India. Dr. Gupta is coauthor with Dr. Sherwood G. Lingenfelter of Breaking Tradition to Accomplish Vision: Training Leaders for a Church-Planting Movement: A Case from India (2006).

OVERSEAS MINISTRIES STUDY CENTER
490 Prospect Street
New Haven, Connecticut 06511 USA
(203) 624-6672
study@OMSC.org