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“What is God’s dream for you?”

It’s this question that guides Dr. Lisl Paul, director of contextual education at Garrett, as she works with students to find the best contextual education placement for them. Asking, and then hearing theanswers, is also Dr. Paul’s favorite part of her job. When she asks, two things become obvious: the great breadth of God’s dreams for the ministry of the church and the very particular gifts that each student brings.

“For many years now, Garrett has encouraged, supported and undergirded students interested in ministry across the spectrum of what we would consider traditional ministry practice: within a parish, chaplaincy, spiritual care or clinical care,” she said. “But we have also supported students who are already practicing within a specific field and are looking to integrate their faith. We’ve had students who have been birth doulas or who have done art and music as their contextual education placement. We’ve had students in the ecology field, racial justice, child advocacy, queer studies—all across the spectrum. Our understanding of ministry practice is whatever allows you to deeply integrate your faith into your work in the world.”

This understanding of ministry and the diversity of contextual education experiences at Garrett have evolved over the last couple of decades, Dr. Paul says, along with a growing “desire on the part of the public to integrate their faith into their everyday lives.” During these years, full-time, traditional ministry positions have become less common. In response, schools like Garrett expanded their understanding of what ministry might be and what theological education can do. Dr. Paul herself not only shares this broader perspective but has lived it as she moved from being a pastor and campus minister into motherhood and work on the founding board of an immigration advocacy organization before coming to work full time at Garrett.

“Getting a Doctor of Ministry degree here at Garrett helped me to discern what my gifts and graces were and where I wanted to live that in the world,” she said. “And it just so happened that I was asked to be a peer group facilitator for the contextual education program here at the same time. Then there was an opening for the associate director position, and I’ve now become the director. It’skind of a winding path, but every single part of my vocational journey — the pastoring in a church, the campus ministry, the non-profit work, my mothering — all of those pieces have led me to a place of finding my vocational home.”

In her current role, Dr. Paul works with well over one hundred students at any given time — 126 at the present moment — across four degree programs at various stages of finding placements and completing contextual education requirements. While Master of Divinity students prepare for ministry in a variety of contexts through the two semester Field Education course, Master of Arts in Theology and Ministry students engage in a semester of contextual education that facilitates their research through methods like ethnography or participatory action research.

Contextual education for the Master of Arts in Pastoral Care and Counseling (MAPCC) and the PhD in Pastoral Theology, Personality and Culture (Clinical Track) has also changed over the last years, as MAPCC clinical track degree director Dr. AHyun Lee describes it. In 2022, Garrett began to offer a chaplaincy track of the MAPCC degree that requires two units of Clinical Pastoral Education,completed at a hospital or another appropriate site. At about the same time, shifts in the curriculum meant that clinical counseling students, who had previously completed clinical training through the Center for Religion and Psychotherapy in Chicago, could apply for internship positions at a variety of counseling centers. This change gave students the opportunity to choose sites based on supervisors, populations served, or therapeutic approach. The diversity of training possibilities also reflects changes within the field of pastoral counseling, which has become more responsive to the realities of widespread trauma and a desire for a broader range of therapeutic approaches.

For Dr. Lee, the heart of Garrett’s clinical education is not simply professional skill-building—it is formation. “Theology is not just added on top of psychological training,” she says. “We’re forming public theologians who can integrate theology and psychology in real relationships. Clinical education gives students a structured place for deep reflection as they learn that they themselves are part of the instrument of care. They become more self-aware, more grounded, and more ethically accountable. Clinical education isn’t just about learning skills; it’s about formation.”

While the details of contextual education may have changed over the years, both Dr. Lee and Dr. Paul attest that this focus on integrating theology and practice is nothing new. In fact, the clinical emphasis, the diversity of the faculty’s theoretical perspectives, and the strong connection to the work of the church were all reasons that Dr. Lee chose Garrett Seminary for her own PhD work. As faculty, she can imagine ways that Garrett’s program might continue to evolve as it more fully supports a diversity of students, perhaps through developing clinical sites of its own or a pastoral theology center that could more fully resource the local church. This could expand access, strengthen mentoring and deepen partnerships with congregations and the wider community.

Like Dr. Lee, Dr. Paul also sees the breadth of contextual experiences made possible through Garrett as an expression of the school’s longstanding values. “It speaks to our underlying vision for ‘the thriving of the church and the healing of the world,’” she said. “The thriving of the church cannot occur unless there’s also thriving input from outside of the church walls. Otherwise, we just become an insular institution that ends up navel gazing, right? And the healing of the world cannot take place unless the church is involved in that healing directly. Those two things need each other.”