LEADing News

LEAD Faculty Teaching Courses in Summer 2026

• Please consult with the Manager for Student Support and Staff Operations and to the Dean, Wendy Larson, wendy.larson@wheaton.edu, if you are have any questions about the courses or schedule you are following as you register as she provides academic advising for our LEAD students.
• For additional details and information for Summer 2026 course offerings, please contact LEAD Office Coordinator
  Cassidy Larson: cassidy.larson@wheaton.edu.

Neil Hart

Neil Hart remains inspired to see creativity as a redemptive force for God’s kingdom. He has observed leadership from diverse vantage points with experience in entrepreneurship, leadership, ministry and organizational management. Neil is going to be teaching the elective LEAD 692 Special Topics: Spiritual Maturity for Leaders: Living and leading from spiritual wholeness.

Neil founded and led creative brand agency, Boomtown, for 20 years where he helped develop strategy for a number of universities and large corporations across South Africa. After that Neil took over the leadership of missions and church planting organization, All Nations, from founder Floyd McClung where he served on the international leadership team and worked amongst unreached people groups in 20 countries. Neil now serves as the executive director of Mergon Foundation, a catalytic resource partner to incredible kingdom-minded ministries working across Africa and the Middle East.

Interestingly, Neil wrote a speech for Nelson Mandela, he speaks three languages, he is an author and exhibited artist, he loves woodworking, playing the guitar, cooking and growing bonsai, but most of all, Jesus.

Andy Billhorn

Elective LEAD 643 Theology of Work: Equipping God’s People to Flourish in their Calling, looks at the narrative of Scripture beginning with God creating the universe as a work, sees sin marring God’s design for work, and shows God calling His people out of 400 years of forced labor and shaping them through liturgical practices to recreate them in the example of his son Jesus, who himself was a working carpenter for the first three decades of his life. We intentionally reflect on the work of our lives, using Scripture, to include what has brought us meaning and frustration in our work, reflect on our current commitments and priorities, and discern how our unique calling can be answered in our lives today in our Andy Bilhorn and his family live in West Town. He works as a management consultant with Fortune 500 C-suite executives and government leaders and serves as a Senior Director at Gartner at the intersection of strategy, technology, and people operations. Earlier, Andy served as a college pastor with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship at Northwestern University for 8 years.

David Van Dyke

David Van Dyke leads you in examining the theological, psychological, and practical foundations for effective mental health ministry in the local church and marketplace. In the elective LEAD 645 Mental Health and the Leader (2) will consider the history of pastoral care and the nature of persons to gain an understanding of the essentials of mental illness.

You will get an understanding of how important relationships are for you as a leader and how that leads to not only your “inner life” as the leader but also of those who work alongside you as your team. You will realize what initiatives to take to structure and foster positive relations as this course takes a systems mental health perspective—i.e., it is more about the team than the individual. You’re prompted to step back and reflect on how your organization functions and then to re-structure processes to foster mental health and how you yourself, as leader, will model mental health to your colleagues and subordinates.

David and his wife, Tara also produce a weekly podcast, "With U."

John Dickson

John Dickson in his inimical, urgent and very personable manner takes you on a survey of Christian history—especially the first thousand years in the elective course, LEAD 647 The Best and Worst of Christian History: Key Insights for Today’s Leaders (2).

He leads you on an exciting exploration of the many and varied ways Christian leaders both embodied and betrayed the way of their Lord Jesus Christ. While heavily informed by relevant primary sources and historical best-practices, one will draw out lessons for contemporary ethics, worship, mission, social engagement, and, especially, Christian leadership.

You will explore the church’s greatest achievements and its most grievous failures. By examining both the best and worst of Christian leaders during our history, you will be challenged, as a leader, to reflect on these ancestors’ life and work—and the lasting impact they may have, for good or ill.

John and his wife, Buff live in Wheaton while their three adult children and a son-in-law live in Australia.

Robert Gallagher

Robert Gallagher’s teaching and research is in biblical theology of mission, the expansion of Christianity from postapostolic times to 1800, and developing ministry workers as leaders. Further, his scholarship focuses on biblical cross-cultural narratives, hermeneutics of mission theology, Lukan biblical theology of mission, and pneumatology and ministry. This background led Gallagher to develop the elective LEAD 692: Special Topics: The Heart of God.

In this course you will examine systematic-theological themes through the hermeneutical lens of the mission of God (missio Dei). Furthermore, specific attention will be given to the historical development of Christian expansion and an understanding of God’s mission within the history of Christian thought and missiology. We’ll use Scripture as the systematic framework with a view to equipping students to develop a biblically grounded and contextually focused systematic theology of mission, which will be applicable to their missional context and life.

Robert and Jayna, his wife, enjoy hiking, reading, and travel, as well as spending time with their five children and 13 grandchildren.

Steven Hyatt

In the required LEAD 503 Cultural Engagement course, Steven Hyatt guides you through a practical exploration to engage culture grounded in a Christ-centered vision. Drawing on Scripture, theology, and contemporary research, you will examine how culture shapes our lives and how the gospel calls us to engage faithfully and wisely across cultural differences.

You will explore key concepts such as cultural intelligence, identity, otherness, and reconciliation while reflecting on your own experiences. Through readings, discussions, and applied assignments, you will develop strategies for engaging diverse people and contexts with clarity, compassion, and conviction.

Steve is a scholar-practitioner with over 25 years of experience in Christian education, pastoring, church planting, and cross-cultural ministry, focusing on Christ-centered leadership and discipleship. He is committed to equipping biblically grounded, culturally engaged leaders for the Church and the world.

Steve and Elissa (Bannow) Hyatt are 1997 graduates of Wheaton College, have been married for 28 years, and have four children. One daughter just graduated in 2025 and another daughter is currently a sophomore.

Junias Venugopal

Junias Venugopal will be teaching the required LEAD 512 Leadership and Spiritual Formation to enable students to evaluate their life in four spheres, personal, family, work, and community/church. The text, Total Leadership, takes is that the skills and behavior needed to succeed in these four spheres are the same and so we need to develop ourselves more synergistically than compartmentalize our life. This course provides a theological and theoretical overview of the role of a leader with people and organizations with a focus on self-leadership. As a result, we’ll focus on fostering the health, character, competence, spiritual maturity, and long-term godly faithfulness of those called to shepherd and lead His people.

Junias and his wife, Beth, will be married 48 years in August 2026 and have four adult children and five grandchildren who live in Inchon, S. Korea, South Carolina, New Orleans, and Las Vegas. Their eldest grandchild is a sophomore at Wheaton College. They love visiting their children in each of their homes, as well as making any excuse to host all of them together in their home.

Terry English

Reflecting on the LEAD 652 Strategic Management Hybrid Modular Class

As a leader, it is important for me to consider the impact of my leadership on the people I am leading. Am I encouraging, enabling, and recognizing those I lead so they can flourish at work?

If I were to focus only on the human side of leadership (the face) without focusing on the structure (the skeleton), am I am creating a sustainable environment for people to thrive and continue to blossom in being and doing to what God has called them. This is a reason why I am glad LEAD has the required course LEAD 652 Strategic Management – providing a deeper focus on the critical organizational side of leadership. And this was the focus of that course which Dr. Shelette Stewart taught us so very well in the first week of March in the Euro LEAD cohort hybrid course.

Dr. Stewart integrated her many years of executive experience with organizations such as Coca-Cola, AT&T, and the Harvard Business School, with her deep love of the Word of God to provide an engaging, thought provoking, and uplifting learning experience.

Through real-life situations from her own experience, case studies, and drawing out experiential learnings from us students, during the week we were able to answer the question “How do we develop a solid strategic plan founded on both biblical and business principles”. The learning wasn’t theoretical – we were all put into practice by drawing up strategic plans for our own organizational contexts, and gave each other critique, feedback, and encouragement along the way.

Dr. Stewart brought a unique blend of experience, dynamism, and “best practice” facilitation to ensure that we did a Situational Analysis, wrote a Marketing Plan, as well as completed an Operation and Evaluation assessment for each of the organizations we served. And at no point were we allowed to neglect the most important strategy of all: “Commit to the LORD whatever you do, and your plans will succeed” Proverbs 16:3.

LEAD Students dine together in Anderson Commons during an Intensive Course week