Timeline 1950 - 1979 - 1980 - 1990 1990 - 2000

1980 Christian Leadership Ministries Founded:
Campus Crusade formally establishes a ministry to reach and equip university professors. Director Stan Oakes and his wife Ginger serve 17 years. Launching the ministry with five full-time staff members, they add their own vision to what pioneering professors on associate staff had developed in the previous decade (photo below).

1981 Christian Faculty Conferences and Workshops:
Thirty professors gathered in Atlanta, followed by others in Columbus and Dallas, learn how they might be more effective in their witness for Christ as professors. Led by Drs. Rae Mellichamp and Walter Bradley, with Dr. Bill Bright speaking on the Spirit-filled life, the Dallas conference is videotaped. More than 3,000 professors view it in workshops on more than 300 campuses during the following two years.

1984 First international ministry trip:
The first Christian Leadership international trip takes Christian professors to universities in South Africa to share their faith and help encourage and mobilize local Christian professors. The faculty ministry at the University of the Witswatersrand in Johannesburg is launched. Since then, CLM has organized more than 100 international faculty ministry trips. including more than 40 to the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.

1986 The Real Issue published:
Mailed to a growing network of Christian faculty—numbering more than 8,000 within a decade—this periodical has encouraged and equipped professors with news, resources, and ideas from others who were seeing Christ work in their lives and at their secular universities. In 2004 it is reborn as an online journal, The Real Issue e-zine.

1987 Christian Faculty Leadership Network (CFLN):
Our faculty leadership development incorporated faculty conferences within Campus Crusade’s biennial July staff conference at Colorado State University, beginning in 1987 through 1995. Initially named the Faculty Affiliate program, it is renamed Christian Faculty Leadership Network. These CFLN professors volunteer to be “official partners with CLM” and serve as a support system to one another in providing leadership to the faculty ministry on their campuses.