Glenn Jones ’28 M.Div. starts his Sunday long before the sun peeks over the horizon. By the time many of his neighbors are taking their first sip of coffee, he has already spent hours working through an intensive reading assignment and putting together the outline for an upcoming paper. Then he heads to church, pulls on his robe, and steps up to the pulpit to preach as a lay minister at his small Lutheran congregation in Ocala, Florida.

Jones is a Master of Divinity student at Luther Seminary—but you won’t find him in a classroom on the St. Paul campus most days. Like many of his classmates, he is shaping his call to ministry from a distance, integrating seminary coursework with a full-time job, deep church involvement, and a vibrant personal life.

“My call is a very deep sense that’s informed by 59 years of living,” Jones says. “It has since developed into a deeply spiritual journey of reviewing my life and saying, ‘This just makes sense right now. I’m just going to roll with it.’ I’m absolutely loving it.”

Student paths while at Luther are as wide-ranging as their physical locations across the country. Some study full time on campus. Others join remotely from homes and churches across the country. Jones’ journey started with a phone call from a close friend.

They are united not by a single schedule or setting, but by a shared commitment to their faith journey and a seminary program designed for flexibility and supporting their varied needs. “When I talk to people about Luther, I mention the flexibility and the support I get from the administration and professors,” says Melissa Wiseman ’27 M.Div., who lives in Bryant, South Dakota. A member of Luther’s first graduate certificate cohort, she is now in her first semester pursuing an M.Div. degree. “This community I’ve been able to build has supported me throughout the whole journey. It’s certainly not easy; I’ve also been challenged.”

“And I really enjoy a challenge,” she adds.

‘I instantly felt at peace’

Along with full-time work for a local electricity cooperative, Basin Electric, Wiseman and her husband raise goats, cows, and chickens about 20 miles from where she grew up.

“Rural life has always been where I’ve been centered,” she says.

Despite considering returning to school for seminary in recent years, Wiseman wasn’t sure about the financial burden and how it would fit into her life. Her considerations became more urgent as her local parish faced trying discussions and decisions around ELCA membership.

“I sat through a lot of parish council meetings and heard a lot of hateful things being said. There was no biblical standing behind them,” she says. “I wanted to be able to talk with these people and have my understanding of things really rooted in a strong biblical background. I thought my studies at Luther would help get me that.”

When Wiseman discovered Luther’s Jubilee Scholarship and graduate certificate program in 2023, she committed. Despite feeling “a bit nervous” journeying to Luther’s campus for the
first time that fall, her experience over three days of residential focus sessions (RFS) set the tone for her experiences since.

“I instantly felt at peace,” she says. “As soon as I got into that classroom, there were 25 other like- minded people there to support each other. That community has really helped me stay engaged with the whole program. I’ve made some really good friends through our cohort and even beyond that.”

Those relationships and the support of her professors have helped Wiseman stay connected to Luther, even from a distance. Her full-time job is remote, which creates flexibility and helps her prioritize her time and energy where she wants to.

“Without the commute, I’m able to do my readings at lunch, my homework after work, those kinds of things,” she says. “It has also allowed me to stay more engaged in my community and in the church. I’m able to dedicate my hours there instead of on the road.”

Her role allows her to stay deeply connected to her rural community while pursuing a vision for ministry that grows from that very soil.

“I’m thinking more about how our local church fits into our community. How the church can expand its walls and bring the church out to the people,” she says. “I’m learning a lot from the people I’m taking classes with—different ideas of how they’re doing ministry in this world we live in. Taking the church to the people, what it could look like for me and for us, is on my mind a lot these days.”
That exploration guided Wiseman’s decision to continue into the M.Div. degree program, knowing Luther would support the development of her future role in the church.

“There is a willingness, especially in my personal experience with Director of Rural Ministries Jon Anderson [’85 M.Div.], to always be willing and available to talk and to think through an idea or something I might be struggling with,” she says. “There’s just a lot of support from the professors and administration in discernment. I see a lot of leadership championing for the future of the church, and that supports my exploration of that in my community.”

‘People who come together for the fellowship in Christ’

Growing up, Jack Hendricks ’26 M.A. and his family moved frequently as his father’s pastoral callings led them to different parishes. After Hendricks was diagnosed with asthma as a child, doctors recommended that he join choir to help build strength in his lungs. What started as a routine breathing exercise soon evolved into a different kind of support; Hendricks found a community and passion that carried through his years as a philosophy and religious studies major at Augsburg University.

“That really kick-started me toward theology on a further level,” he says.

Life, however, had different plans than a straight-line continuation into theological study. After his father was diagnosed with cancer, Hendricks prioritized supporting his family.

“I kind of wandered for six or seven years in terms of my career path. I worked in retail, some health care, and at a coffee bookshop. At one point, I worked at an industrial decal factory as a service representative,” he says. “I was talking to my partner, Lindsey, and she really helped encourage me to get back to school and a community I could grow with.”

Hendricks was aware of Luther from his time at Augsburg, and as he explored it in 2023, he found “an educationally oriented, academically robust community of faith.”

He decided to fully immerse himself into campus life, living and working on campus while pursuing his Master of Arts in History of Christianity.

A typical day is split between working in various departments on campus—offering him different views, a deeper understanding of Luther, and focused studying. That leaves him a few hours each day to socialize and connect with others on a personal level.

“Living here really brings you into the community—the understanding that it’s not just disparate students but people who come together for the fellowship in Christ,” he says.

As Hendricks works through the final year of his master’s program, he plans to continue his studies with an eye toward teaching adult education or at the college level. He’s particularly interested in “integrating where digital ministry and platforms can help grow the church or reorient mainstream denominations.”

His holistic experience in seminary is helping inform his continued journey as a developing leader within the church, whether his next steps continue at Luther or move him outward.

“The continued support, the access to faculty and staff, the resources, the networking, the education of theological standing: those are things you can’t quantify and that I’ll always take with me,” he says. “Luther does such a great job of really giving you that broad picture and then helping you to not only have the motivation but the tools to address it.”

‘The balance I need’

Back in Ocala, Jones’ reflections on his faith journey go back well before the fateful phone call that helped push him to Luther.

After being charter members of a Lutheran mission church in the New York Adirondack Mountains in the early 1990s, Jones and his wife, Carol, struggled to bond with a congregation after moving to Florida. Finally, in 2017, they reconnected with the Lutheran church and have been deepening their spiritual connection and community ever since. That deepening also opened Jones up to the idea of attending seminary, even as he applied without a specific goal in mind.

“I didn’t know what my ministry would look like. I just had this sense that this call, literally and figuratively, needed to be heard,” he says.

As he prepared for his first course in 2024, Jones says he was nervous about the dynamics of weekly classes centered on discussions over Zoom. The in-person RFS session with his classmates and professor made all the difference.

“I’m not going to St. Paul four times a year for the buildings. It’s the professors, my fellow students, and the support and community we build together than means so much to me.”

—Glenn Jones ’28 M.Div.

“Having those three intensive days to get to know everyone was amazing,” he says. “Really getting to know them in that in-person context and then spending time with them digitally once a week works really well for me.”

That flow from a foundational RFS session into coursework from Florida has continued through each of his certificate courses—all while balancing work as a senior manager for the United States’ largest fire truck pump manufacturer.

“My career has grown in the past year, but I’m still getting the balance I need with sleep and the rest of my life,” he says. “I give myself some grace during the week and on the weekends really put my brainpower into my studies.”

As his studies progressed and Jones continued heeding this call, it led to his decision to transition from the graduate certificate into the M.Div. program. He says he’s come to realize the significance of being able to preside over communion in his ministry. That significance informs a potential call to become a pastor, even as he’s still exploring what that will look like.
“I’m sort of searching for that and am going to let it happen,” he says. “The support I have from Luther on that journey is incredible.”

Community, wherever you may be

As Jones, Wiseman, and Hendricks embark on the next leg of their individual journeys at Luther, they share a community that supports every step they take. That reality is all the more important, Jones and Hendricks say, as Luther transitions into the next leg of its own journey, away from its current physical campus in St. Paul and into a new space.

“I’m not going to St. Paul four times a year for the buildings,” Jones says. “It’s the professors, my fellow students, and the support and community we build together that means so much to me.”

It’s a feeling shared by many in the Luther community. Their paths to Luther are and will remain wide-ranging, but they share a steady commonality that defines their experiences: They are shaping Luther—and Luther is shaping them—no matter where they are physically. From Ocala to Bryant to St. Paul and countless other cities on the map, students are intertwining their journeys with Luther and continuing to build their and the church’s future.

And that’s not going anywhere.