What this program has done for my personal life as well as my professional one is truly evident. I have been inspired, encouraged, and awed intellectually, and my heart is in a deep transformative process.

Mary Beth is confidently adventurous: she’s willing to learn things that topple her assumptions, ready to take on myriad professional experiences, and she even welcomes the fact that life after graduation is “a blank canvas” for now. She draws strength from the knowledge that God is at helm of her life, directing everything in a way she can ultimately trust.

But she hasn’t been without fear. Matriculating in the Master of Arts in Ministry program at Richmont required her to drink deeply in the knowledge that her Savior called her to minister to His people, whatever the cost. She’s passionate about taking others by the hand and running with them toward the “Real God,” not the one constructed by legalistic religion. She’s desperate for others to encounter the God she knows – the God who loves, who teaches, who laughs with her.

He must have been laughing the day her mentor, Dr. Marty Goehring, playfully instructed her to quiet a group of spiritual retreatants at the St. Ignatius House. Calling his bluff, Mary Beth rose from her seat with a solemn look, acting as if she were going to do just that. Dr. Goehring broke first and stopped her from her ill-fated mission, not realizing she’d been joking too.

Dr. Goehring is just one of the aspects of Richmont that Mary Beth loves. She’s crazy about “the staff, the professors, the coursework, and the applicability” of her studies to real life, too. She says she’d recommend Richmont even to those with no interest in vocational ministry because “what this program has done for my personal life as well as my professional one is truly evident. I have been inspired, encouraged, and awed intellectually, and my heart is in a deep transformative process.” Wherever Mary Beth’s God takes her next, it’s safe to say she’ll be in good hands, growing in every moment of the path that leads her deeper into her Savior’s love.