MEET: Wendy Fisher, Life Learning Program Coordinator
Published by Calvin Seminary
In Lifelong Learning, we collaborate to equip leaders for transformation as they navigate their calling. This mission combines many of my passions: working with people, supporting ministry leaders, encouraging and noticing transformation, and creating systems that implement a vision.
I grew up in Lowell, MI, but my vocational path has led me to call many places home: New York City; Boston; the U.S. Virgin Islands; the Blue Ridge Parkway, with A Christian Ministry in the National Parks; New Haven, CT, for divinity school; East Lansing, MI, for my seminary internship; Prinsburg, MN, serving with Unity CRC and Rice Hospital; Deerfield, IL, for my husband’s Ph.D.; and Kathmandu, Nepal, where we were privileged to teach young pastors. Since returning to Grand Rapids, I have been a part-time instructor at Kuyper College and was the interim Associate Director of Student Life at Western Theological Seminary. In 2004, my husband and I completed the Special Program for Ministerial Candidacy at CTS (with the bonus of meeting each other!). In this way, Calvin Seminary has also been a home for us, and I am grateful to be back in this community that profoundly shaped my family and me.
As part of Lifelong Learning, CTS recently launched our new competency-based theological education (CBTE) learning path called Empower. This itself has involved a lot of learning! I was drawn to work on CBTE due to how valuable I found my own theological education and my strong desire to make it accessible to more students. My theological education served me in my roles as a ministry leader, hospital chaplain, and instructor and in my own discipleship, church membership, marriage, and parenting. Currently, my husband and I have two growing teenagers. They tower over me in height, delight me with their humor, and help me with technology. (Truly, I could not have met the online teaching demands of COVID without them! And, as their at-home teacher, I hope I offered them a bit in return.)
In this season, I understand an aspect of my vocational calling: companioning others on the spiritual journey and encouraging encounters with God. This happens in my practice as a Spiritual Director, shaping my Lifelong Learning coordinator role—as I help implement educational opportunities, resources, and support for ministry leaders and students. I pray with Paul that “we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit” (2 Cor 3:18)
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