When Matlidah Dondo left Zimbabwe to seek her Master of Divinity at Garrett, she felt sure that she simply wanted to deepen her pastoral counseling skills so she could better serve students at the school where she served as a music teacher and administrator. “No, I definitely don’t feel a call to ministry,” she told her supervisor. God sure loves a chuckle at our confident intentions. Three years later, as she receives her diploma, she is pursuing ordination as an elder in the United Methodist Church—a dramatic transformation not only from her Roman Catholic upbringing, but also to her vocation and sense of self. This kind of change is not uncommon in seminary, but it speaks to how spiritual formation both connects students to God’s voice and illuminates the gifts that they possess.

Once you learn about Dondo’s teaching experiences in Africa, this shift toward ministry might not be a surprise. As an early-career teacher, she saw how many students lacked programming and structure after the school day ended, particularly those who didn’t want to play sports. To meet this need, she created a music club to give them an outlet for passions and creativity that might otherwise land them in trouble. “Our school became vibrant in music, well known in the community, and we even won some music competitions,” she says with delight. “I became quite popular and was placed in charge of the school’s elementary department.” In this new position, Dondo was now responsible to care for students’ and families’ emotional health, offering care to whoever arrived at her office in crisis. “I didn’t know how to help them except to read the Bible and pray,” she says. “I consoled children and their parents, but I realized I was just using my own biblical knowledge, and that wasn’t enough. I needed to get those skills.”

When she arrived on Garrett’s campus, ready to learn more about care and counseling, she began looking for a new church home. “Someone told me, ‘You should try First United Methodist Church,’” she remembers. “When first I saw Pastor Grace preach, I was amazed—coming from a Catholic background.” After some time attending worship, she was talking with Rev. Grace Imathiu and expressed doubts about her own ability to pursue ministry. “Grace said, ‘No, you can do this,’” Dondo recalls. “It’s not too late.” With renewed confidence, Dondo began considering a call to ministry, but to step into the pulpit herself still seemed daunting.

“The first time I preached I was shaking,” she confesses. “I wondered, ‘Who is going to listen to this? Am I doing the right thing?’” Experiences in Dr. Brooks’ preaching classrooms, however, offered the skills and conviction she needed. “The way I read and understand the gospel totally changed,” she says. “Learning to exegete the scripture, write a good script, even instruction on which voices we should use as we speak to God’s people.” As she moved through her internship, she discovered that where she once felt anxiety she now brimmed with confidence. “Now, I feel the Spirit float, flowing through my body,” she shares. “It’s hard to explain, just this overwhelming presence. I preached last month and thought I was delivering a simple message, but then people started crying, people began to confess. God was moving in that place.”

This comfort in Dondo’s preaching reflects a broader spiritual formation she experienced in her Garrett years. “Spiritually I am growing. Back home, there was little room for Bible studies, this program has changed the way that I pray, the way I practice my faith,” she observes. “I’m no longer the same.” She also received education to expand the pastoral care skills that brought her to Garrett in the first place. Classes like pre-marital counseling or dying and suffering offered opportunities to pair academic study to practical concerns. “If I had not taken that class, honestly I wouldn’t have known what to do if someone came and said, ‘Pastor, I only have two weeks to live,’” she shares. “Now, I know how I can help someone navigate that process, to understand their condition and embrace death in life.” As she moves into the world, Dondo seeks to marry her longstanding desire to care for people with her newfound ministry. “I’m called to nurture,” she says simply. “That’s the most important role I play.”

“The more you learn about yourself, the more you feel compassion.” In a few words, Sanjog Patro cuts straight to one of the facets that makes Garrett’s pastoral care and counseling program so distinct. “The crux of what we’re taught is to venture deeply into who you are, knowing yourself, pushing your boundaries, expanding where you feel comfortable.” With its focus on trauma-informed care, spiritual formation, and emphasis on clients as protagonists in their own story, the MAPCC has quickly become the seminary’s fastest-growing degree program. As Patro graduates, he already has a job lined up as an expressive therapist at Lake Behavioral Hospital, ready to put what he’s learned into practice.

For the past two years, Patro has served as a counselor to people who have suffered sexual trauma, an experience that swiftly challenged him to employ that training. “For someone like me who had no prior experience working with clients, you’re thrown right into the deep end and you learn to swim,” he says. “But I fell in love with counseling, and pastoral counseling specifically.” One particularly helpful lesson was to reflect on the energy he brings into a counseling space. “I still remember so freshly the first class I had, Dr. Nolasco’s course on human relations,” he says. “The skill of being present sounds so simple yet is so complex. But if you truly believe that the image of God is in the person before you, then you become holistically present to their life.” At his new job, he’ll mostly counsel formerly incarcerated people and folks undergoing court-mandated therapy, but he says Garrett prepared him to see the commonalities across different patients. “Trauma may manifest with different symptoms, but its roots are the same,” he notes. “And regardless whether someone has suffered sexual trauma, emotional abuse, or physical violence, your task is to create a collaborative process that places your client at the center of their own healing.”

As he describes the excitement he feels to enter this new chapter of his vocational journey, Patro expresses deep gratitude for the ways Garrett makes theological education accessible. “It’s very important to understand how Garrett provides a financial possibility for students like myself,” he says. “We want to talk about ideologies or counseling disciplines, but you have to understand that as a foreign student, financial access comes first. I never thought it was possible to study in the U.S. The aid Garrett provides is why the program is a space of such diverse voices, which is essential for effective counseling.”

Overwhelmingly, what emanates from Patro is abundant joy at the prospect of leaving seminary ready to do the work to which God calls him. “It feels almost surreal, after all the classes and hundreds of clinical hours,” he exclaims with a wide grin. “I’m excited to work, man.” Not only is he poised for meaningful service, he’s entering that vocation brimming with confidence. “Self-actualization is so important to counseling’s ongoing, dynamic process,” he says. “What’s powerful about Garrett is they know that spiritual formation for the self is essential to care for someone else.”

Sometimes God has you right where you’re needed most. While Job Pangilinan discerned his call to seminary, he was also serving in lay ministry at Seattle’s Fairwood Community United Methodist Church and realized he couldn’t leave his community for three years. The church depended on his leadership and he felt the Spirit rooting him in place, his pastoral gifts finding abundant use. Still, he knew he was called to serve as a Methodist elder so he jumped at the opportunity when he learned he could study remotely and receive his Master of Divinity at Garrett Seminary without leaving Washington. It was a fortuitous choice: Three years later, he’s not only graduating with his degree, but has also built a ministry that helped more than 150 Venezuelan refugees find the welcome and resources they need to build a new life.

Like many acts of faithfulness, Fairwood’s migrant ministry began with saying “yes” to an urgent communal problem without a clear vision for how their small church would be able to meet the enormity of people’s needs. “It was a very controversial decision for the church to make, but it was a call of crisis when we knew that families and children were sleeping in the park with nowhere to go,” Pangilinan confesses. “We just opened our doors and let them stay in the sanctuary. We didn’t have a plan, just a desire to give them warmth—everything else followed.” One year later, the church has been able to offer much more than refuge. “We’ve taken their kids to school, provided them with food, clothing, and a warm place to sleep,” Pangilinan reports with joy. “Isn’t this what Christ wants the church to do? And it’s created transformation within our community: People are offering ESL classes, donating food, loving God by loving our neighbors.”

Over the course of this incredible year, Pangilinan has been deeply moved by how the faith of the people he’s helping has deepened his own. “They have walked a journey thousands of miles into the unknown seeking safety,” he says. “It’s the theology that guided the biblical Hebrews. When you ask them, they will tell you outright: We are crossing the Red Sea.” As debates about immigration swirl throughout the country, through acts of service Pangilinan and his church have found a way to turn down the volume on venomous rhetoric pointed towards the strangers God explicitly calls us to welcome. “It breaks my heart, but it has also strengthened my faith,” he shares. “They are still filled with hope that God will provide them with their needs, despite all the fear that’s around them. This is the way the Spirit moves, a challenge to see how far you will follow love.”

Ministry takes more than faith, however. It also takes resources, and the church has been overwhelmed by the wider community’s response. “Initially, we had so many questions about whether we could do this—we knew it would be expensive,” he recalls. “We have proven all those doubts wrong as the church continues to flourish. Non-profits and neighbors have donated money to sustain this ministry.” It’s also become a potent gift for evangelism. “Even neighbors who don’t consider themselves church members, who might never come worship, are participating,” he says. “They volunteer, they give their time. That’s what church is all about, when a congregation opens its doors and the community floods in. Imagine how it would astronomically change the world if this were how every church acted.”

Throughout the process of guiding the church through this revitalizing ministry, Pangilinan has been attending classes online, writing papers, and learning new skills he can use to support the congregation’s incredible work. “There’s no better way of learning than applying what you’ve learned,” he laughs. “Every time I learn something I know is adaptable, my own church benefits immediately. I’m using things the same week, sometimes the day, I learn them—whether its preaching tips, pastoral counseling, or cultural competencies.” Indeed, he says that one of the most potent ways his education has shaped his ministry is the transnational character of Garrett’s online classroom. “My peers come from all over the world, which has broadened my lens, receiving knowledge from so many sources,” he reflects. “It’s an incredible synergy where all of us contribute and enrich each other’s experience, validating the work of God through our experience and testimony.”

This gift is exactly what Garrett intended when the seminary expanded its degree programs to offer the option to pursue a fully-remote MDiv. More students like Pangilinan are pursuing ordination while already serving a community or balancing the demands of higher education and family life. A remote MDiv ensures that residential education does not become a barrier that prevents anyone from following the call God has placed on their life. But it’s not just a benefit to students: By tethering our community to all the places in which our students live and serve, Garrett’s community more fully reflects the beauty of God’s global church. Pangilinan’s ministry is a living witness to this truth. During graduation week, he was honored to preach in chapel, testifying, “Surely, goodness and mercy have followed us here!” And churches like Fairwood grow stronger, infused by the lifegiving theologies nurtured in Garrett’s classrooms. “I’m not saying we’re a perfect church,” Pangilinan concludes. “But what’s important is that we’re a church who is listening to the voices of both God and our community—and acting on that love.”

Ryan Haas’ call story began in tragedy. He was on a high school mission trip when he learned that his associate pastor, who the community thought had beat his battle with cancer, answered an unexpected phone call: He was newly diagnosed with a cantaloupe-sized tumor. “We were all distraught, heartbroken, and started mourning right there in the hallway because we knew he was going to die,” Haas recalls. “In that moment, our youth director was so composed and offered strength, told us we could ask questions and be angry with God. She said, ‘I can’t fix this for him or anyone, but we can be here together in our greif.’” Haas was the slowest to rejoin the group because the experience viscerally reminded him of his own father, in and out of hospitals his entire life. “It just isn’t fair,” he says solemnly. “But my youth director was so helpful—no answers or conclusions, we just got to wrestle with the news.” When the group returned home and he had time to reflect on his experiences, he knew what he wanted to do. “We were sharing our experience with the church,” he remembers. “I finally got to the microphone, and I said, ‘I want to do what our youth director did for us on this trip. That’s how I want to spend my life.’”

This potent sense of vocation didn’t diminish with time. He attended Illinois Wesleyan University to pursue a religion and business degree and, upon graduation, enrolled in Garrett’s MDiv program. While he first entertained the notion that he might pursue chaplaincy instead, a youth ministry internship steered him back toward his instinctive path. “Working with the kids, I had the John Wesley heartwarming moment,” he says. “I knew this is where I should be and what I should be doing.” Life wasn’t through with surprises it held in store, either. At the end of his second year, a youth ministry position opened at his home congregation, First United Methodist Church in Normal, Illinois. Joyfully, he accepted the role part-time, which enabled him to continue his seminary education while also serving the congregation. Upon returning home, he knew he made the right choice. “It makes me feel so good when people say, ‘I watched you grow up and I’m so glad you’re back,’” he says. “There’s been an outpouring of people who tell that they remember hearing my call story when I was a sophomore, that they’ve been praying for me since that night and now that I’m here those prayers won’t stop.”

In the intervening time, however, Haas developed skills at Garrett that prepared him to build robust programs for the community’s young people. “Dr. Blount’s youth ministry course was particularly powerful. I thought he was going to tell us what kind of programs might work with our youth. On day one he said, ‘That’s not what we’re doing here.’” he laughs. “Instead, we learned how they engage the world, what’s going on in their brains, because if we can understand where they’re coming from and what’s changing within them, we can affect them in positive ways.” He also integrated faith and ecology courses to help his youth group care for the local ecosystem. While youth ministry is sometimes erroneously treated as an afterthought in churches, Haas relishes the opportunity to bring intention to this work. “Helping youth engage and understand their faith isn’t a someday thing, it’s a right now thing because life is hard,” he says. “A twelve year-old just reached out because they lost a grandparent, asking ‘What do I do? How do I find Jesus?’”

One of the most powerful ways a Garrett education has shaped his work at Normal, however, is his ability to accept the job in the first place. “Being a fully online student was the only way I could pursue my calling, because youth ministry is a very in-person activity,” he notes with gratitude. “As a deacon candidate, I’m not guaranteed a job upon graduation, so being able to access school from wherever helps me get ordained but also live in a world where I really need a job.”

Now that he has graduated, he’s thrilled to dive headfirst to support these young people’s lives. “My own youth group experience was very chaotic, I had three youth ministers over four years,” he says. “Now I get to be an ongoing presence for them. There are things I can do to make the world a better place and to show God loves all people.” One of the first things he did? Make sure the youth lead worship on the first Sunday each month so they can take communion. “I never realized how important communion is until I came to Garrett and got the sacrament every week,” he says. “Now, the church sees and loves that our youth are either ushers or communion servers the first Sunday each month. They’re going to get their communion, and we’re going to know God loves us.”

“Jesus isn’t the one who takes away your suffering. Jesus is the one who is with you in your suffering and strengthens you through it.” Emily DeLew’s voice is resolute as she describes how God shows up in her chaplaincy work. It carries the steady warmth one longs to hear at a hospital bedside, a calm assurance borne from theological study and contemplative practice. Next year, she’s embarking on a year-long residency at Northwestern Memorial Hospital. Many people might be hesitant to serve in a level 1 trauma center, but DeLew maintains the same steadfast energy when discussing the prospect. “Jesus would be running toward where people are wounded, to the people who grieve most deeply,” she says. “Chaplaincy is how I can follow Jesus most closely.”

The road that led DeLew to this conviction traversed its own valleys of hardship and loss. She enrolled in Garrett while working at a large urban church, where she had been a member for more than a decade and had, some years ago, entered an executive leadership role. She realized she needed more education if we wanted to continue to grow and expand in her role so, feeling called to minister to that church, she began seminary. Unfortunately, during her first year at Garrett, she experienced problems within the church that led her to leave both her job and the faith community. “There was so much grief around that choice,” she says. “I still had three more years of seminary, but I found myself at a loss because the reason I entered was no longer there. That year was full of thoughts like ‘Why am I here? What am I doing?’”

This sense of instability in vocation coincided with the normal pain seminarians experience when wrestling with difficult questions about God and the Christian tradition. “Sometimes the deeper you go, especially in church history, it can lead to so much cynicism,” she notes. “Disentangling the white supremacist roots in our theologies, contending with racist histories within the church, you can ask, ‘Where is God in all of this?’”

What she found, however, was that this process of discernment led her to both clarity in vocation and a deeper love of God. “I can’t believe it. I love Jesus so much more than I ever have. It’s just not the Jesus that I always knew,” she says with wonder. “At the same time, I sensed God releasing me from local church ministry, redirecting me towards hospital chaplaincy, to envision ministry outside church walls and participate in the beauty of God’s presence.” This palpable comfort reassured her God still had a plan for her future. “In that moment I knew that hope was not lost,” she shares. “God is found in deep connection—liberating and empowering.

As she completed her first unit of clinical pastoral education, she found opportunities to use skills she learned in Garrett coursework. “The most meaningful course I took was prayer and theology with Dr. Bedford, where the whole focus of the class was on contemplative prayer,” she says. “One of our assignments every day was to sit in contemplative silence—starting with 5 minutes a day and growing over the course of the semester—and, afterward, to write our thoughts in a prayer journal.” The steady rhythm of intentional time and presence to the Spirit was transformative to her prayer life, and offered new skills she can bring to the hospital. “I’m able to practice this while on shifts,” she shares. “I’ll be in the middle of a night shift or waiting for my pager to go off—feeling nervous, feeling anxious—and this practice has taught me how to give intentional space and freedom to access the divine even in the shortest windows.”

Now, she finds that the theology she reads blends deftly into the care she offers. “In Wendy Farley’s book Gathering Those Driven Away she describes how important incarnational theology is to how we make meaning out of suffering,” she shares. “The fact that Christ suffered was proof that suffering is not because of punishment, condemnation or blame. It is also proof that God will not abandon us.” As she enters the hospital room, she carries a potent sense of the indwelling holiness of the person to whom she will provide care. “I find it to be an immense honor to walk alongside or accompany people in these very specific moments of their lives, often unwelcome moments,” she concludes. “It’s a window into their humanity, their stories, the possibilities of love and joy that form in the midst of our connection.”

“There’s something special, especially right now, about taking the time to celebrate the good in our world. To center joy, when we have it. To be in community and relationship with one another. To affirm life.” Dr. Simran Jeet Singh offered these words as he began his address to this year’s graduating class, but they nod to an overarching ethos Garrett instills in its graduates as they prepare to serve our aching and fractured planet. In an age of epithets and vitriol, Garrett prioritizes dialogue and nuance. Against broad, sweeping narratives, the seminary offers contextual learning to serve communities’ particular needs. Amid rampant polarization, our graduates seek common ground. Fittingly, commencement was a celebration of those ideals as much as it honored the newest 60 alums who received their diplomas.

Dr. Singh embodies how religious values and ethical practice can prepare leaders to confront intractable problems without spiraling into rage or succumbing to hopelessness. In his remarks, he described how growing up Sikh in Texas presented early and frequent encounters with racism that pushed him to contend with this question. “I was 11 years-old the first time someone called me a terrorist,” he recalled. “It was at a soccer game. The referee was doing equipment checks, got to me and said, ‘I know your people like to hide bombs and knives in those rags. I need to check that, you little terrorist.’” Appalled at the official’s open bigotry but unsure how to respond, Dr. Singh stepped forward, lowered his head, and let the official pat down his turban. “I was so mad at myself. The rest of that day and the weeks that I followed, I asked myself, ‘Why had I given into this person’s racism? Why didn’t I stand up for myself?’” he said. “I knew I was a kid, but also I knew better. After weeks of being upset, I finally gave myself a little grace and said, ‘this is a lesson for next time.’”

He didn’t have to wait long before “next time” reared its head. After basketball practice, Dr. Singh was playfully roughhousing with one of his friends when the other boy snatched the turban off his head. “I wasn’t even mad. He was my friend and I knew he was joking, but I flashed back to this moment with the soccer referee, how mad I was with myself, and this promise I had made that I’d stand up,” Dr. Singh recounted. “I jumped on [my friend]. I tackled him. I started punching, he started punching back. And as I walked out of the locker room, I remember feeling so confused. I thought this was what I was supposed to do, to stand up for myself, but for some reason this felt miserable, too.” By presenting the range between these two responses—a helplessness before abusive authority and an instinctive anger that ultimately left him feeling depleted—Dr. Singh deftly named an omnipresent moral quandary.

For this graduating class, many of whom are already serving faith communities, the combination of widespread suffering, political polarization, and denominational crises

can be paralyzing. Even well-intentioned churches can feel overwhelmed by the magnitude of the challenges that surround them, and ministers are often tasked with finding impactful ministries despite having diminished resources and increased demands for their time. In such circumstances we cannot do everything, but commencement offered several models for how to serve with courage and compassion.

Three honorary doctorates were presented in the chapel that morning. The first to Mr. Roland Fernandes, the General Secretary of the United Methodist General Board of Higher and Ministry. For more than 30 years, Mr. Fernandes has served UMC global ministries, cultivating international partnerships that pursue decolonial models for providing aid—working with partners in more than 120 countries. For that work to be faithful, it must not only be reciprocal between both parties—it must honor both the generations that preceded us and those that are to come. “You stand at the intersection of past and future,” he said, talking to the graduates. “But it is one thing to celebrate change by experience, by faith, by education. It’s another to lose sight of where we come from.” That sense of belonging to something greater than the self was echoed by Dr. Hla Hla Aye, a medical doctor who also worked through the World Health Organization and United Nations as a lifelong advocate for disabled people and for women’s sexual and reproductive health and rights. “Originally I just wanted to become a clinician,” she said as she received her honorary degree. “But God led me to become connected to the needs of the people, especially during social and political turmoil.”

The final honorary doctorate was announced as a surprise, to celebrate Rev. Dr. David Heetland who will retire next January after serving Garrett’s development office for 42 years. Over the course of his remarkable tenure, Rev. Heetland helped raise more than $280 million in gifts and pledges to Garrett’s endowment, a towering legacy that will fund scholarships and programs for decades to come. This monumental gift is grounded, however, in the fundamental disposition of gratitude that Rev. Heetland brings to his work. “If you are true to doing what God has called you to do, you will be blessed many times over,” he counseled the graduates. “And that’s how I feel today: I have been blessed.”

This broader commitment to place and people is also represented by the two faculty members who retired as professors emerita. Dr. Hendrick Pieterse leaves his post as Associate Professor of Global Christianity and Intercultural Theology after 15 years, while Dr. K.K. Yeo retires as Harry R. Kendall Professor of New Testament at Garrett-Evangelical Seminary after a stunning 29 years educating Garrett students. Both men’s legacy is not only borne in the profundity of their scholarship or longevity of their tenure, however, but in the hundreds of lives their classrooms shaped. Wisdom and mentorship aren’t bounded in time, they ripple across the ministries they nurture, bringing the world nearer to Christ’s transformative love.

Indeed, a principle that unites all the people honored on that venerable morning is the conviction that local community is where enduring change takes root. Whether our graduates become parish ministers, counselors and chaplains, non-profit executives, or professors, their lives are an investment in grassroots leadership. Even as culture swiftly changes, Garrett commits itself to the gospel’s enduring hope: God is present wherever two or three are gathered in God’s name and resurrection manifests among disciples who follow in the way of Jesus. This is not the first time that the Church has faced monumental threats or existential danger. Christian communities have lived under plagues, wars, and fascist governments, persevered through persecution, economic ruin, and natural disasters, and still have found ways to labor for the thriving of the church and the healing of the world.

That call is not an easy one, however, so Dr. Singh stressed how ritual practice can ground religious leaders in the power that sustains them, reminding them who and whose they are. “When I wrap my turban every morning, I think about my values as a Sikh,” he noted. “I’m wrapping my turban and I’m thinking about service, love, and compassion. I’m asking, ‘How am I going to live these values today?” Whether he was facing the challenge of remaining rooted in these principles against widespread prejudice in the wake of 9/11 or just the promise of another day, spiritual formation offered the foundation for ethical fortitude. “By exercising these muscles regularly, I’d strengthen them to the point where I could carry more than before,” he observed. “When difficulty came, I would be trained to respond with my values rather than from a place of fear or anger.”

In his conclusion, Dr. Singh offered a Punjabi parable of hope in dangerous times. “There’s an old tale about the first time the sun was setting,” he said. “The people were afraid that when the sun would finally set, the night would be permanent.” In a remote corner of the land, however, a small lantern lit its wick. It was unable to extend its power far beyond its own house, but determined to offer what it could. “A nearby lantern, inspired, lifted its wick,” Dr. Singh said, a smile growing across his face. “Then another, and another—one by one—as the people watched in amazement as so many little lanterns illuminated the Earth, and there was brilliance.” Speaking before 60 radiant lantern bearers, Dr. Singh proclaimed the hope they offer against the gathering night. “This folktale has been a compass to me,” he said, “There is so much pain, so much suffering, but each of us can love and lead with courage, humility, and wisdom. Reflect not just on what you will do next, but also how you will do it—with what spirit, intention, and integrity. I invite you to ask yourself, ‘In my small corner, what will I do to share my brilliance with the world?”

Did you miss our 2025 Commencement?