Chris and Carol Green Named Professors, Vice Chancellors of Administrative Leadership and Professional Development

Chris and Carol Green with Chancellor Prof. Michal Pitzl and Chief Chancellor Prof. Clyde Rivers

Kampala, Uganda (UGCSI) ----Professor Clyde Rivers and Professor Michal Pitzl have announced the appointment of Chris and Carol Green as the new Professors of Searcher Education and Vice Chancellors of Administrative Leadership at United Graduate College and Seminary International (UGCSI). This couple will be positioned to lead the Professional Development of the school's global team of educators and instructors.

UGCSI is a private, fully accredited Christian College and Seminary that provides its students an e-learning education model for their ministry training. With excellent Biblical programs, as well as accelerated ministry degree programs, it is anchored by a unique staff of educators from all over the world, who offer a truly practical, well-rounded international ministry education experience.

As affiliate members and International Statesmen with iChange Nations™, Chris and Carol Green have partnered with UGCSI to provide an accelerated, ministry-accredited life coaching certification program. Their collaborative purpose and mission has been, to offer leaders, working in under-served communities, high-quality tools that empower and equip them to be more effective in their humanitarian efforts.

After successfully establishing this International Leadership Life Coaching Program in the United States, the Greens were extended this prestigious invitation from the UGCSI  Chief Chancellor and Chancellor, who had been following their progress and success.

"The Greens have been with us for a while," says Chief Chancellor Clyde Rivers. "They have worked in obscurity and just been faithful in helping us build a culture of excellence and honor."

Chris and Carol Green received formal Christian Leadership Training (a 5-year school of ministry) from Dr. Raphael Green (D.Ed.Min) who founded the Metro Christian Discipleship Academy in Saint Louis, Missouri; earning licenses and ordinations as ministers in May of 1991. To further enhance his education, Chris completed two business certification programs at the University of Missouri-St. Louis’ School of Professional and Continuing Studies. They both completed a lay-counseling certificate program from the American Association of Christian Counselors.

They continued to expand and grow in their professional development through their enrollment in United Graduate College and Seminary International (UGCSI), where they received Bachelors and Masters degrees in Christian Leadership, as well as certification as master life coaches through its Colleges of Christian Education and Divinity: Educational Department.

After completing the Master Life Coaching program, they took their certifications and began volunteering their coaching skills in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania's under-served communities, and it wasn't long before local organizations began to recognize and acknowledge the high-quality work that was being invested.

In 2018, Chris and Carol Green introduced their ground-breaking CARE-Readiness Training and Certification for Providers, Mentors and Coaches. Over the course of two years, they were able to certify nearly 80 Life Coaches, which meant the positive impact of their high-quality, life-transforming program was being duplicated and distributed.

"The timing is perfect for bringing the Greens into UGCSI as Vice Chancellors and Professors," explains Chancellor Michal Pitzl. "Due to the covid-19 outbreak, we're in reset mode just like the rest of the world, but when we return, we have a special opportunity to equip and empower the leaders that both work in our school, as well as the leaders from all over Central Africa and the world, who come to us for ministry training. We're looking to PROFESSORS Chris and Carol Green to help us build a Global Leadership Professional Development Program."

As the world's leading producers of CARE-Ready Life Coaches™, Chris and Carol Green have been teaching and training community, government and education leaders, human service organizers, business visionaries, and neighborhood dreamers how to be much more effective by embracing the principles of CARE (Compassionate Accountability with Respect and Empathy) in their professional and personal lives. They LISTEN to people, LIFT people and LAUNCH people. Then they equip and empower them to do the same for others.

Many coaching, mentoring and community outreach programs employ what is known as a "deficit model" of working with people. That's where you focus on the problems (deficits) of a person, and then apply a set of pre-determined, cookie cutter steps and treatments to address their issues. The deficit-based model is what many well-meaning Helpers use, but it rarely works long-term, leaving Helpers wondering why their clients fail to break the cycles of addiction and recidivism.

However, their CARE-Ready Life Coach Training™ mirrors the principles found in the proven, Best Practice strategies of Strength-based, Solution-focused models. CARE-Ready life coaches are trained to connect with people in order to build a relationship/ partnership that empowers the client; thus allowing the client to discover the solutions that will work best for them.

While many coaching programs focus on how to target potential high-paying affluent clients, and high-paying speaking opportunities, the Greens train, equip and empower Care-Ready Providers and Coaches™, who are willing to take on the most often overlooked people of society; those who live in under-served communities, who can least afford, but benefit the most from professional guidance.

"We're very excited that the Greens accepted our invitation and this appointment," Pitzl concluded. "They will bring another level of expertise and experience to our overall global mission."

Chris and Carol Green are also recipients of honorary doctorates in Christian Leadership (Chris) and Humanities (Carol); as well as honorary doctorates in Society and Human Rights (both). They are currently candidates in the UGCSI Christian Leadership doctoral program.

A Song that Requires a Symphony of Lives to Play It and an Entire World to Sing It

Chris and Carol Green respond to the murders of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor and George Floyd

There’s a lot of noise right now; a lot of noise; a lot of screaming. There are screams of pain, screams of anguish, screams of vengeance and retaliation, screams of mocking, screams of silence. I don’t like getting caught up in a lot of the noise.

For some of us, our silence doesn’t mean we’re complicit. Have you ever seen that person at the funeral who cries, but no sound comes out? They shake and convulse. They sob. But they don’t wail or scream. That’s me. My silence is pain that’s so deep, that it has no sound.

So I had to pull back before I spoke, because I wasn't interested in merely adding to noise, but to contribute to a specific sound. It’s a sound with a frequency that is beyond the human ear, and heard only by the heart. It's a sound that comes from not only pain, but from prayer, and being in God's presence. I have to worship before I speak. So now I speak.

One of our spiritual daughters (from St. Louis, MO) sent me a message this morning and said she noticed that I hadn’t said anything (publicly) about the latest police killings. I must confess that I have been so triggered that it was best for my wife and I to not say anything because we were just filled with pain and rage.

For a couple of days, I posted and re-posted all kinds of stuff on social media, but one night me and one of my sons had dreams on the same night, and I felt like God was telling us that we needed to go back and delete all that stuff and regroup. So we did.

There’s nothing else I can say that hasn’t already been said. I was sickened; I was overwhelmed by it all. It was too much, too back to back. It was a rapid fire punch, punch, punch, slam! I couldn’t breathe. Before we learned what George Floyd had said, we had all experienced it. We literally could not take another breath. We collectively, could not breathe.

It brought back everything: The last few years of police shootings; the last 52 years of futility, since Dr. King’s death. It brought back the years of our parent’s Civil Rights struggle. It brought back the cruelty of the years of my sharecropper grandparents. I say that for those who say that this was all a long time ago. But you don’t understand. For many of us, our grandparents, and certainly our great-grandparents were alive when Harriet Tubman died. It’s not ancient, forgotten history. It is the substance that is part of the sub-atomic material that makes up the DNA of the African American soul.

So when I say that we collectively could not breathe, you better believe that there are those who read what I just wrote and tears filled their eyes, because that’s what hit us, all over the United States. It’s not an ancient history. It’s an embedded soul-and-spirit-memory connection that knows no time and no distance.

It's an implicit PTSD response to:
246 years of official slavery (1619 - 1865)
99 years of Jim Crow Laws (1865 - 1964, and I was born in 1959)
86 years of Lynching (1882 - 1986) Did you get that? 1986
14 Years of Fighting for Civil Rights (1954 - 1968)
52 years of systemic incarceration and ravaging of Black families through government programs. (1968 - 2020)
401 years of Oppression (1619 - 2020)

And then there is the empirical evidence of shared experience. Black people from all walks of life, who have never met one another, have expressed, almost word-for-word, the same experiences. No one got together in a forum and put together a narrative that we would spread across the country like news reporters all reading from the same page. This is pure empirical evidence.

The problem with communication is that I have 12 different things that I need to say, all at the same time. I should be talking about my Faith in Jesus Christ and my commitment to the Kingdom of God. I should be talking about the need for love and hope in the midst of chaos. But I can only address one thing at a time. So bear with me and forgive me for what I failed to say, and just give me a minute to finish the Book my wife and I are writing right now, and then you can have at it. I can only say one thing at a time.

Today is just the introduction; the opening musical notes of a song that requires a symphony of lives to play and an entire world to sing.

The unrehearsed, collective words my sons, nieces and nephews have used have been these: “We are angry and we’re hurt. We don’t need your opinion. We don’t need your judgment. We’re just hurt.” They were not looking for sympathy or pity. They had been expecting at least a small measure of empathy. And they were shocked to learn that a lot of their White friends, co-workers, and even classmates, going back to high school, had no empathy for them.

I would ask if you would bring judgment into a conversation with a hurting friend, but I now realize that some of you would. You’d do the same with your own friends and family. You’d have no compassion, no respect and no empathy for them either.

So, many things have been stirring in us the last few days. We are people of Faith. We are people of Peace. We try to always choose wisdom's way. And now I'm getting to what we feel at liberty to say.

Carol and I wrote a speech a few years ago (2017). We shared it with an audience that was predominantly White. We were invited by two White gentleman with whom we shared a bit of our story, and they were willing to take the risk to have us share it with their supporters.

It's a speech about the value of listening to others and understanding others, and we invite you to that table to dine today.

Here is that speech: https://www.facebook.com/notes/chris-and-carol-green/it-only-take-one/2708202862749486/