Beeson Podcast, Episode #632 Liz Dec. 13, 2022 >>Announcer: Welcome to the Beeson podcast, coming to you from Beeson Divinity School on the campus of Samford University. Now your hosts, Doug Sweeney and Kristen Padilla. >>Doug Sweeney: Welcome to the Beeson Podcast. I’m your host, Doug Sweeney, here with my co-host, Kristen Padilla. And today we’re wrapping up our brief series of interviews with graduating seniors who are heading off to serve the Lord elsewhere. This week we’re joined by a senior named, Liz. We won’t tell you Liz’s last name. She’ll be serving in a place where evangelism is frowned upon. Kristen will tell you a little bit more about her soon. But first, let me thank you again for supporting Liz and her colleagues in the Beeson student body through prayer and other more tangible acts of kindness. As you make your yearend gifts, please keep our students in mind. One of my goals is to raise enough scholarship money to make Beeson tuition free for all of our students. We’ve got a long way to go. But we pray the Lord is in this with us. By making even a small gift to one of our student scholarships, you can help us reach that goal. Find out more at www.BeesonDivinity.com/giving. All right, Kristen, would you please introduce Liz to our listeners? >>Kristen Padilla: Sure will. Thank you, Doug. Hello, everyone. We have, as Doug has already mentioned, a graduating student, Liz, with us on the show. She will be graduating with a master of divinity degree in just a few days. And she is from Alabama. So, welcome, Liz, to the Beeson Podcast. >>Liz: Thanks! >>Kristen Padilla: As a way of introduction, I wonder if you could introduce yourself to our listeners? Tell us where you are from and how you came to faith in Jesus Christ? Yeah, I grew up in Alabama in a Christian home. So, there is not a time that I remember not being in church. I came to faith in Jesus when I was five years old. I remember asking my teacher what I needed to do and praying a prayer to accept Jesus as my Savior. I had a strong sense of this is what I need to do now. I just have a really clear memory of that, even though I was so young. I was actually saved around the same time as my older brother, who I always wanted to be like. And so I don’t remember this, but my parents told me that of the two of us I was the one that was like, “Okay, I’m saved and now I should be baptized, and I know that I’m saved and why am I not being baptized?” They were wisely asking questions and making sure that this was [inaudible 00:02:56] faith with that dynamic going on, too. But it’s just a fun element of my story that my parents remember because it turns out I’ve been Type A my whole life. >>Doug Sweeney: Liz, we know that you were a nurse before you became a student at Beeson. Why did you become a nurse? Especially with the advantage of hindsight, how do you look back on that and see that as part of God’s providential guidance in your life? Maybe even preparing you for divinity school, and preparing you for the ministry he’s got for you? >>Liz: Yeah, I decided to be a nurse sometime toward the end of high school. I had done some volunteer work at a hospital and through that I had always been kind of drawn to the sciences, but I wanted to be able to help people in a tangible way, just take care of people. And I also wanted skills and knowledge that would transfer pretty directly onto the mission field. I always thought I would be doing short term missions, I would take two weeks or something and go overseas, but it wasn’t until I actually went on a mission’s trip, a short term trip to Southeast Asia that I felt this call to maybe I’m actually called to do this long term. So, it was a really big trip for me. It was the first time I had been out of the country. It was the first time I had been on a plane. So, yeah, it was a lot to process. But through that I just had this really firm call to long term missions. But first to seminary. Because I wanted to be able to ... if I was going to use my nursing degree to go to places that other people can’t get to, I wanted to have a really firm foundation of knowledge of the scripture and how to teach the bible and how to lead people well before I got there. So, I just wanted to be as prepared as possible. I think nursing school in general just really helps me with that because you learn how to retain just a bunch of information at one time. I kind of still felt ... that’s how I learn really deep critical thinking, that’s ... I sort of filter everything through the nursing process, which I don’t know, just really helped and also how nursing education works with having part of your time in classrooms and part of your time in clinicals in the hospital doing the work, really learn how to deal with people, how to teach them things ... So, it just gave me a lot of skills that I never would have had otherwise. >>Kristen Padilla: So, once you decided that you needed a seminary education, what led you to Beeson? A question that we often ask. Listeners, you probably have seen it on social media and elsewhere is: Why Beeson? So, Liz, why Beeson? What’s your Beeson story? >>Liz: I really didn’t know what I was signing up for when I came to Beeson. I actually hadn’t done that much research on seminaries when I applied and was accepted. I only applied to Beeson when I was applying to seminaries, which has been a little bit of a theme in some of these interviews I noticed, listening to the other students. But my reason was partly because I wouldn’t have to change my nursing license to a different state if I ... Well, this one is in Alabama, I already know people here, this will be the easiest way for me to do this. And then if I apply to this one place and I don’t get in, I won’t have to deal with it for another couple of months. But it wasn’t until I got here that I realized what a special place Beeson is, the caliber of professors that we get to study with, the community emphasis has been such a blessing to me. I really think that it’s the best place, it’s been the best place for me in this season, and it was just purely the Lord putting me where I needed to be. Yeah, it’s just been so encouraging and formative. I wasn’t sure before I came here if I should even really take a class like preaching class. But each semester I’ve just had a renewed call to be here, to continue, to keep pursuing missions. >>Doug Sweeney: Kristen has already mentioned that you’re graduating with an MDIV degree. And most of our listeners know that’s the main degree that people get when they’re going into full time ministry. And we’ve already told our listeners that you’re becoming a missionary and you’re going to use your nursing even in your missions work. But we haven’t mentioned the missions certificate. You’re graduating with an MDIV and a Missions Certificate. And some people listening know what that means, but probably not everybody knows what that means. What is the Missions Certificate at Beeson? And how has the Lord used it to help prepare you for what he has next for you? >>Liz: So, the Missions Certificate is you have to be an MDIV student to be a Missions Certificate student. You take certain electives, you go to certain number of events every semester. So, we have things like global voices where it’s typically a missionary that comes and speaks with the students. We have Friday morning prayer which has just been a really good routine in my schedule. And you have other students who are also called to missions, so you know that, it’s a really good group, you’re not alone in this call to go overseas. So, I would definitely recommend it for students who are thinking about overseas missions. And I would also recommend it for people who are concerned with how do I learn how to support missionaries. The other requirement for the Missions Certificate is we do our CCMP (Cross Cultural Ministry Practicum) for six weeks instead of the normal two weeks. Everybody has those two weeks and they encourage everybody to try to go overseas if they can. Or at least to a different context than they’re used to. But we get the opportunity to go for six weeks. So, it helps you adjust and see a little bit more of what it would be like to live in a country without constantly being jetlagged. And yeah, part of why I chose Beeson was for the Missions Certificate. That is one thing that I had looked at before I applied and was accepted. I don’t think I signed up for it right away, but it was always part of what I thought I would do. I just wanted to learn a little bit more and be here for a little bit before I officially signed the paperwork. I thought I would take those electives whether or not I was officially in the program anyway. And like I said, things like Friday morning prayer have just been really formative for me. Dr. Parks does such a good job of cultivating this group of students that really care for each other and provides time where we can slow down, we can hear about what’s going on in the world, and pray for those things, which it’s really easy to get bogged down in all the different assignments that you have, all the different responsibilities that our students have. It’s just been a really good reminder, a really good routine in my schedule to be praying for the nations every Friday morning. >>Kristen Padilla: We’ve asked all of the students that we’ve had on the show for this series to reflect on their three and a half years at Beeson as they approach graduation. And as has already been mentioned, you’re one of those who started before COVID and then COVID happened. You also worked as a nurse while you were in school. So, I wonder if you can just invite us in to some of your memories and share with us some of those special moments or some of those ways in which you’ve grown over the last three and a half years while you’ve been a student at Beeson? >>Liz: Yeah, it’s definitely been challenging. Yeah, it’s been rewarding and encouraging, but I mean it’s also been difficult to manage the work load here with also working part time as a nurse. Especially during COVID. There was a time about a month or so where I was trying to do as much as I could for the clinic that I work at, as well as keep up with all of our school online, which is just not the typical Beeson experience. It’s not what anybody really wants. So, I think that really made us excited to come back even more so. I remember the students who started right at COVID or the semester afterwards when everything was just a little bit different. And being like, oh man, they’re just not experiencing everything that Beeson can be. So, we were excited when we did get to come back and when we got to be even more normal in the next couple of semesters. But yeah, we just had a lot of support from friends and from students and from professors and just everybody was contributing to make it work and to get through together. As far as classes, my first semester I was part time here, so I was only taking two classes. And then I moved up to full time. I’ve been full time since then. But the two classes I took my first semester were Old Testament Theology with Dr. House. And Spiritual Formation with Dr. Gaston. And those two classes together were really good for me. They were really significant to me. Because we were reading large portions of the Old Testament for every class period. And then we were also looking at spiritual formation, spiritual disciplines, and we were writing our own up to that point our spiritual autobiographies. And so just learning about scripture from somebody who knows so much and is so good at applying it to our lives and praying for us in class as well as writing and hearing the other student spiritual autobiographies were just a really special time of hearing what the Lord is doing and examining what the Lord has done in the past. Yeah, I think a lot of the professors have really been impactful for me. Dr. House for sure. I’ve really enjoyed learning from him. And he’s just got such a big heart for students. He has high standards for sure. But he also just has a really big heart for us to learn and part of that is challenging us. But also our professors are concerned about us as people. They’re interested in what’s going on in our lives. I’ve talked to multiple professors like Dr. House but also Dr. Gignilliat, Dr. Bells. I’ll just go to their office and sometimes it’s about school, sometimes it’s about a different class that they don’t teach, or I just want their opinion on a paper or a sermon or an assignment like that. It’s a fun resource to be able to just walk upstairs and see who is available to talk to! >>Doug Sweeney: That’s great! So, Liz, at the very beginning of this recording we talked about how we need to be careful in explaining what God has for you next. But can you tell us enough about where you’re headed so that our listeners can be praying for you and so we can get a good feel for the kind of ministry that the Lord is leading you into? >>Liz: I plan to move to central Asia after graduation. I’ll be joining a missions organization, or through a missions organization I’ll be joining a team there. It’s a medical team. Most of them have been there for several years, so they’re established in this place. It’s a Muslim nation. It’s considered an unreached people group. So, in the medical clinic I’ll be able to use my nursing skills to form relationships, to support the team, to stay in the country, and then I’ll also be using my seminary skills to reach the people who have never heard the gospel before. And hopefully support the church that’s already there, where God is already at work. So, yeah, I was able to use the CCMP requirement that I mentioned as part of the Missions Certificate, I was able to fulfill that by going to this same place with the same people. I got to do a little bit of language learning while I was there. So, being there for several weeks, I was able to really get a better picture of what my life would actually look like day to day. When I go back long term it will still be different, but that was a really good opportunity for me to be able to go and experience the culture. >>Kristen Padilla: Well, Liz, we always like to end these shows by asking our guests what the Lord has been teaching them these days that would edify our listeners as we close out. I’m just thinking as you’ve been talking about God’s faithfulness in your life and excited about the ways that he’s going to use you in ministry. Listeners, we ask you to pray for Liz as she goes out to this place. I wonder if you can just share a word of encouragement, anything that the Lord has been teaching you recently in your private devotional life? Or even maybe something here at Beeson that you will take with you to the mission field? >>Liz: Yeah, I think that especially over the last four years at Beeson what I would say the Lord has been teaching me is that he can really do a lot with hesitant faithfulness. When I first started Beeson I was trying to get out of it. I just couldn’t really get rid of this call to missions. And I kept getting encouraged and affirmed and I kept wanting to do it as well. But I thought I was coming to Beeson because I needed more knowledge. More knowledge about God, more knowledge about how to teach scripture, so that I could work overseas – but I definitely got that, I definitely needed that, and the program definitely gives you a lot of knowledge and good foundation and good teaching – but I’ve also just realized that I needed time. I needed time to come to terms with my call to overseas work. I needed time to realize how much that’s going to impact me and all the people that love me. I just needed time to be in a place like this where I’d be encouraged in my abilities to teach and pastor people. I needed time to grow in my relationship with the Lord, and see how he just keeps coming through for me. Anywhere I am, everywhere I am, whatever my circumstances are. So, I just think the Lord knew what I needed and gave that to me before I even really realized what was happening. So, yeah, he’s just so patient with me, with my reluctance to accept this call that he has on my life. I’m still kind of ... I still feel reluctant sometimes. But I’ve just seen how much the Lord’s plans are better for me and actually the best thing for me. So, yeah, even though I’ve been barely faithful, a minimum amount of faithful, just the Lord can still do a lot with that. And he is still perfectly faithful and trustworthy. >>Doug Sweeney: Amen. That’s wonderful. Thanks be to God for his faithfulness and loving kindness to us. You have been listening to our friend, Liz. We’re not going to tell you her last name. She is one of our most beloved students here at Beeson. We all know her last name. But we can’t mention it in this context. Please pray for Liz as she raises money to head overseas and then follows the Lord’s leading to this place in Asia that she’s been describing. Thank you for tuning in. We love you, and we say goodbye for now. >>Kristen Padilla: You’ve been listening to the Beeson podcast. Our theme music is written and performed by Advent Birmingham of the Cathedral Church of the Advent in Birmingham, Alabama. Our engineer is Rob Willis. Our announcer is Mike Pasquarello. Our co-hosts are Doug Sweeney and, myself, Kristen Padilla. Please subscribe to the Beeson podcast at www.BeesonDivinity.com/podcast or on iTunes.