Meet the Graduates:
Duwayne Carr

See video clips of graduate Duwayne Carr here.

More than 700 students complete their degrees at Fuller this year, with plans that will take them into a range of ministries and vocations. This series highlights just a few of these graduates.
 
Gaining Knowledge and Self-Discovery at Fuller
 
From the age of 10, Jamaican native Duwayne Carr wanted to be an attorney. Until, that is, he encountered God in a dramatic way as a young adult—and sensed a strong call to pastoral ministry. He “sat with that call” for several years, serving in a parachurch ministry where he mentored and worked with youth.
 
Then, in 2005, “I came to Fuller to prepare to be a pastor,” recounts Carr—drawn to the seminary’s commitment to prepare students “with a mind for scholarship and a heart for the gospel.” Says Carr, “I’ve always been an academic, but I also prize the things of the heart—and sensed I’d be able to bring my two selves together at Fuller.”
 
Fuller offered this to him, says the soon-to-be MDiv graduate, and more. The parachurch ministry for which Carr worked in Jamaica had collapsed in scandal—“and it left me broken and jaded,” he admits. “Seminary gave me space to think, process, grow, and heal.” Fuller was a place not only where he found a wealth of scholarship and teaching—through coursework with such professors as Clayton Schmit, James Bradley, and Bill Pannell—but “it was also a place where I could explore myself, discover who I am, and put my own theology into a broader historical perspective,” Carr says. “John Calvin talks about the two parts of wisdom: knowledge of God and knowledge of self. That’s what I found at Fuller.”
 
Part of that self-discovery was the realization that he could be both pastor and attorney. “My time at Fuller awakened in me a consciousness about social justice,” he explains, “and helped me develop a more balanced theology—one that recognizes our responsibility to feed the poor, shelter the homeless, care for the sick.” It rekindled in Carr a desire to pursue law as an avenue for addressing those justice issues—alongside the work of preaching that he also loves. “The idea of a dual career has really opened up to me,” he says.
 
For now, Carr has set his sights on a period of acquiring more hands-on ministry experience. And as he does, he feels prepared: "I am leaving Fuller with a central, safer self because of a central, safer theology."
 
Learn more about Fuller’s MDiv program.

Read more stories about Fuller’s 2009 graduates.