An Electric Path to Ministry
November 11, 2024
Remote M.Div. Students at Garrett Tell Their Stories
Serving God has never been simple work. Ministry demands a unique blend of emotional intelligence, compassion, and courageous leadership to nurture communal flourishing—a difficult call in any circumstances. And the swiftly changing context surrounding theological education presents students with additional hurdles. More and more, students answer a call to ministry as part of a second career and must work while pursuing their degree. Many have families and other responsibilities that make residential education incredibly difficult, if not impossible. Still others are already serving churches, trying to balance a Master of Divinity alongside parish life. Witnessing these challenges, Garrett Seminary has significantly invested in our digital infrastructure, curriculum, and remote learning pedagogy to help students access and afford our M.Div. program. We fervently believe that logistical hurdles should not impede the ability to seek ordination and are delighted by how these changes have enabled dozens in our incoming class to follow their dreams.
Tim Cook is emblematic of this new generation. He lives in Carmi, Illinois where he serves as pastor of First United Methodist Church. “I got my undergrad degree in biblical studies and wanted to go to seminary since I graduated, but it was never feasible,” he says. “I ended up out of church work for a decade or more raising my family.” With a son starting high school and another beginning college, uprooting his family to Chicago simply wasn’t an option. “I can’t just drop everything for three years and go to school, as much as I would enjoy that,” Cook laughs. “But the church has always been the place where I felt called to make a difference.” Fortunately, generous scholarships from Garrett and his conference helped him enter seminary as a remote student, without taking on debt he couldn’t afford. “There’s so much good work to be done in community churches,” he says. “Now I can answer that call.”
Jeff Hipp had similarly struggled to balance his deep longing for pastoral leadership with life’s other responsibilities. Living in rural New Hampshire, the idea of relocating to Evanston felt even more far-fetched. “I have a family and children, and there’s so much about ministry that makes incredible demands on our family—particularly in the Methodist itinerant tradition,” he says. “I couldn’t just ask them to up and move someplace for school, nor was that financially possible.” He considered pursuing lay ministry, until he realized that lay ministers are unable to offer communion. “I realized God was calling me to extend Christ’s cup to a world that is suffering and in need of grace,” he says. “Our concept of the open table is so powerful—that any table anywhere can become Christ’s table when we invite people, set the place, and allow Christ to do the rest. So, I entered the candidacy process to become an Elder in the United Methodist Church.”
It’s not only those who seek ordination as elders who enter a remote M.Div. program. Leanna Fecher serves as director of care ministries at Clay Church, a United Methodist Congregation in South Bend, Indiana. Although she had felt a call to ministry since she was twelve, it wasn’t until her current position that she knew what shape that call would take. “Last December, I did a hospital visit and it was the first time I attended to someone who was dying,” she shares. “I loved hearing about his life. Then, when his spouse asked me to pray, I don’t remember what I said but I remember the feeling in that room, the presence of God. When I said, ‘Amen,’ I thought, ‘This is what I’m meant to be doing.’” She entered Garrett to pursue a vocation in chaplaincy, and ordination as a deacon. While responsibilities to her family and three stepchildren would have made residential education difficult, it was the desire to continue serving her church and community that sealed her choice. “There’s such a holiness in those relationships, an intimacy in those moments of connection,” she says. “Now I can still work 30 hours in my job while also attending class.”
For Fecher, this arrangement doesn’t only benefit her church, it also deepens her education. “I have found that one feeds the other, it’s this really great feedback loop,” she notes. “There are things I’m actively learning in my foundations of chaplaincy course that I can apply to my ministry, or encounters I have in caring that I can bring into the classroom.” The variety in class formats also help her strike this balance. “I love my chaplaincy class because there’s only 12 of us and we learn so much from one another’s voices,” she says. “But also, my asynchronous New Testament helps me fit seminary into my life. I can be reading in the next room while still a present parent.”
When Jeff Hipp visited campus, Garrett’s intentionality in approaching remote education was part of what settled his decision to attend. “I sat in one auditorium class where they had an online lecturer that day. Someone several rows back asked a question, and the presenter could hear it without issue because of the quality of the online learning equipment,” he remembers. “It was so impressive.” As a software engineer, Hipp is aware of how challenging it is to not only purchase the right technology but create a cultural environment that prioritizes hybrid learning. “In smaller classrooms I saw conversations happening between in-person and online students and it blew me away,” he says. “Then when I went home, I watched the chapel service on Youtube and saw the quality of the livestream production – I realized that there was an investment to make even Garrett’s chapel accessible to remote students.”
While innovations that enable full-time remote education may be new, the underlying curriculum for training faithful ministers is the same regardless of whether people attend class from India or in Evanston. “The faculty are so pastorally focused,” Tim Cook reports. “I can tell that they design their courses so everything we learn is useful to someone serving a church.” He also appreciates the broad theological diversity in Garrett’s classrooms. “I grew up really conservative and am new to more moderate and liberal mainline culture even though that’s where I feel theologically comfortable,” he shares. “But when I articulate my background, I still feel so welcome.” Jeff Hipp agrees and appreciates how remote learning also tethers together aspiring ministers across the globe. “I’m in a spiritual care lab with a man from Liberia and a woman from Iowa,” he says. “After we finish our work, we’ve been sharing challenging things happening in our lives, promising to pray for one another. There’s an organic spiritual community, and that’s such a gift.”