Travis Fletcher-FNW Alumnus

Seminary was not a destination I had in-mind when I moved to the Pacific Northwest in 2005.  I was exploring God’s call to ministry as a youth leader at a great church, but I figured that I would eventually find my way back to the business world.  I came to Fuller Northwest mostly in response to a felt need; I wanted to know more about the Bible, theology, history, and how God makes disciples in every corner of the world.

I liked Fuller Northwest from the start.  Small classes, great community, and professors who truly cared about the local church and putting the knowledge of seminary firmly into the hands of God’s people in accessible and faithful ways.  My M. Div. cohort was an eclectic mix of women and men, various ethnic and cultural backgrounds, but all united in service to Christ.  Over time, our cohort and the rest of the Fuller community became a place of depth, trust, and discipleship - especially when the ups-and-downs of life took us to places we could never have anticipated.  Together, we grew as disciples of Jesus through our struggles and our shared commitment to completing our studies at Fuller.  Maybe that’s the biggest surprise that I found in my time in seminary - it’s a time to grow as a disciple of Jesus and be transformed just a bit more fully into his image.

Alongside of this transformation was, in my case, an increasingly-undeniable call to pastoral ministry.  My wife and I watched as God slowly revealed this call to us through the Holy Spirit and in the context of both my field education internship and through my work at our local YMCA.  I engaged in long-term conversations with local governing bodies of the Presbyterian church and completed the journey through the ordination process just in time for graduation from Fuller last June.  The same week I graduated, I accepted a call to become the associate pastor at a wonderful church in Grand Junction, Colorado - the western side of the state, just a stone’s throw from the Utah border.

Since we moved to Colorado last fall, we have fallen in love with our new city, our terrific house, and the neighborhood we’re called to serve in the name of Jesus.  Most of all, we love the church community to which we’ve been called - a group of people who are passionate about reaching their neighbors and the whole world for the sake of Christ.  Especially in such a mission-focused congregation, I feel grateful to God for the way Fuller prepared me to not just know theology or Bible or church history or ethics, but to be able to intentionally share that knowledge with the world.

This emphasis on an outward-focus to academic work has been one of the enduring gifts of my time at Fuller Seattle.  Because the regional campuses work hard to serve the needs of folks who are often part-time students (i.e. women and men who serve Christ in the business world, or in government, or in other spheres of professional life), my seminary experience was very much a real-world-focused endeavor.  The faculty and staff at Fuller Northwest did an amazing job of both maintaining high academic standards and helping students connect with the world which Christ died to save.  I’m still new at the role of pastor, but I feel well-prepared and confident every day because of the outward-focused training and rich discipleship Christ provided for me at Fuller Northwest.

It’s a great joy to be serving God’s church after a well-rounded and rigorous academic season at Fuller.  More than sheer head-knowledge, my time at Fuller was a time of discipleship, community, and learning to better trust the Lord with my whole life.  I look forward to Fuller Northwest’s growth and expanding mission in the years to come as more and more women and men are trained to be servants of Christ and can engage the world in ways which are faithful to the gospel.