The Center for Christian Endurance began small and close to home. Fifteen years ago, it was conversation and prayer around a shared table: American church leaders gathered with global underground church leaders, realizing the Church's hardest questions about suffering, persecution, and perseverance deserved serious, sustained study, not just sympathy.
That conviction grew into a full teaching ministry: seminars, published research, and a network of partners across restricted regions who trusted us with their hard-won wisdom. The work has only grown more urgent as concern over religious freedom deepens in the West itself.
Today, the Center carries it forward, equipping leaders through conferences, podcasts, publishing, and partner seminaries, and bridging Christians in restricted contexts with those in the freer world so both can stand firm together.
Meet Karen & Carl Ellis.
Karen Ellis
Dr. Karen is the founder and Executive Director of the Center for Christian Endurance. Her interest is in the practical theologies written by the persecuted church throughout the ages. She introduced the term Christian Endurance Studies to gather historical and contemporary theologies of perseverance under pressure into a single discipline. She holds a PhD from the Oxford Center for Mission Studies and has served through writing, teaching, and advisory capacities alongside ICR-USA, HMK, Global Catalytic Ministries, the Two Cities Project, Help the Persecuted, and the Center for House Church Theology.
Carl F. Ellis Jr.
Dr. Carl shapes the Center's teaching program, drawing on decades of study in the African American Christian experience. In 1972, he was ordained as a minister of the Gospel and has taught prison ministry seminars for Prison Fellowship for many years. From 2015–2025 he was a Senior Research Fellow at Reformed Theological Seminary. He holds a DPhil from Omega Graduate School, and has mentored pastors around the world. Since the 1990s, he’s served as both a teacher and an advisor on leadership development with The Gloucester Institute, Project Joseph, Barnabas Aid, and the Two Cities Project.
"Our research contributes to an existing rich, historical conversation to apply practical theology and biblical knowledge to real-world situations."
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