Matt Stearn’s walk across the Eastern Mennonite Seminary commencement stage on April 30 was not only a personal milestone, but an institutional one. Stearn is the first student to complete the Master of Divinity/Master of Business Administration (MBA) dual degree since the program began in spring 2014.
Stearn, who serves as director of music at Harrisonburg Mennonite Church, hopes to work with a non-profit organization addressing direct social services after graduation. He worked at several other churches in other denominations earlier in his career and found they weren’t as engaged with community needs as he would have liked. Now he hopes to dive in to that need.
“I thought that combination of an MDiv and an MBA could open doors in working with a faith-based non-profit,” Stearn says. “It just seemed like a great fit.”
At the time he was seeking an academic program, Eastern Mennonite Seminary was the only place in Virginia where he found that synergistic dual degree. Stearn focused on cross-cultural and community mission on the seminary side of his education, and non-profit and community entrepreneurial management on the business side. He says he found the interplay “enlightening.”
“It’s not just what makes good business sense, but also the theology and ethics of ‘This is why we do this,’” he says.
Three years after he started taking courses, Stearn joined 20 other seminary graduates in receiving his degrees. Fourteen students—including Stearn and Kathleen Chapman, who received a dual degree with the MA in Counseling program—earned Master of Divinity degrees, four earned the Master of Arts in Church Leadership, and three received certificates.
Seminary dean Michael King says he was impressed by this year’s class.
“As I took in the many insightful capstone presentations by graduating EMS students, I was struck by the richness and range of topics addressed,” King says. “Students showed us what a seminary at the crossroads of the day’s key issues can look like as they brought scripture to bear on conflict in the church, sexuality, disabilities, racism, war and peace, healing for military veterans and the society that sends them into harm’s way and so much more.”
The class chose the “Abiding in Christ, Caring for All” as the commencement theme, drawing on John 15:5-9 and John 21:15-19. Linda Alley, who serves as seminary events coordinator and is retiring this year, spoke at baccalaureate April 29 on “Call and Dwelling in Tenuous Times.”
“God is not a destination,” Alley said as she looked at the “abiding” themes in John. “God is home.”
John D. Roth, professor of history at Goshen College in Indiana, spoke at Commencement on “The Beauty of Holiness.” Roth, who also serves as director of the Mennonite Historical Library and editor of Mennonite Quarterly Review, told the graduates that God “determines the outcome of history,” and there is beauty in that awareness.
“This afternoon as you prepare to move into new settings, new assignments, and new challenges I want to encourage you to not to flinch from the painful, ugly realities of our world, our nation, or our church,” Roth said. “But I also want to challenge you to be attentive to the surprising power of beauty and its capacity to transform the world. . . . The task of the church—your task!—is to astonish the world with the beauty of the gospel.”
Story by Laura Lehman and Walt Wiltschek
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