2014 Graduates

Each year we ask some of our extraordinary graduating students to tell us about their journey through YDS and tell us what is next. This year our profiles will appear in three installments, featuring students headed into a number of different vocations, including parish ministry, public service, teaching, as well as students bound for further education. 

Corinne Ellis
United Church of Christ

Visiting YDS more than three years ago on Admitted Students Day, what drew me in was the community. The resounding hymns in Marquand Chapel, the warm smiles and conversations shared at coffee hour, the passionate and lively discussions in seminars–I wanted to come here for the people. As I prepare to graduate, it’s the people that transformed me here at YDS, and it’s the people that I will remember.

I was formed by official and unofficial community meals, which introduced me to food ministry and the power of a shared table. I was formed by my internship at United Church on the Green in New Haven, whose congregation taught me what it means to build community among people who share pews but differ in so many ways. I was formed in the classroom, both in the content of my courses and by professors committed to both the academy and the world. Professor Carolyn Sharp taught us about the content and history of the book of Joshua–and she also taught us how to teach about biblical violence in a congregational setting. At YDS we are surrounded by classmates who are talented, engaged, and energetic, and we push and challenge one another, and we care for and love one another too. 

I have a first call to the Transition into Ministry Program at Plymouth Congregational Church of Des Moines, IA after I graduate. It’s a call where I hope to explore many different facets of ministry and focus my long-range goals in ministry. I am committed to congregational ministry and community building, and I have faith that the church is an important and transformative place for this community building to happen.

Daniel Miller
Evangelical Lutheran Church of America

As it stands now, I am three and a half weeks from my last class at YDS, four weeks from the end of finals, and about six weeks from graduation. While these numbers feel of utmost importance to me at this moment in time, the number that means so much more to me is three, three years to be more specific. I began my journey at YDS three years ago, and for these past three years I have learned, matured, grown, explored, loved and found a place that I can call my home. I came to YDS right after completing my undergraduate degree at Bucknell University. It was at that time that I was discerning a call to ordained ministry in the ELCA and looking for a place that was strong in academics and ministerial formation.  Knowing the tricky and at times demanding requirements for ordination in the ELCA, it was important that YDS had a strong community of Lutheran students who were present and active in the community and who had a strong sense of denominational identity with one another. As a person still exploring what it meant to discern a call from God in my life, it was important that YDS took faith formation and vocational discernment seriously both inside and outside the classroom.  Those were the two requirements that I thought were the most important aspects to my theological education heading into my first year back in 2011. In many ways those aspects of community and faith life here at YDS are still so very important to me as I look at my time spent here. But I have also grown in ways that I could not have imagined, neither because I was a Lutheran nor because I wanted challenging academics. I have grown because the faculty, staff, and of course the students here at YDS are some of the most amazing and loving people I know. It was among them these last three years, as we studied, ate, sang, laughed, cried, and worshiped together, that I have truly learned what it means to live in faithful community with one another. It is at YDS that I have discerned my call to ministry, through good times and hard times. It is because of YDS that I am continuing to explore God’s call by moving to Chicago to do both my Lutheran year at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago and my yearlong internship placement at a Chicago area congregation. I could say so much more about my time at YDS, but what I really want to say at this time is thank you. Thank you YDS. May your halls always be transformative, may your teachers be ever inspiring, and may your love of God and neighbor continue to shape this community. 

Elizabeth Blunt
Episcopal

In 2008, when I was working as a development officer at the Heard Museum in Phoenix, Arizona, one of our volunteers – Millie Wesley – invited me to sing in her church choir. Having grown up in western Michigan in another Christian tradition, I was a little suspicious of Episcopalians, but (when she asked the second time) decided to stop by. Three years later, I found myself a much better singer, an Episcopalian, and a participant in a dad-daughter-dog caravan north and east toward Yale Divinity School. God never fails to surprise.

I had tucked a calling to ordained ministry into the back of my filing cabinet of possibilities a number of times – during my studies at Bowdoin College, seven years working in hospitality in Breckenridge, Colorado, and my more recent work in Phoenix. I suppose, like many, I needed to live some life, climb some mountains, and make some impressive mistakes before I was ready to be oriented to the work of ministry.

My coursework has really been the mainstay of my time at YDS.  The program has allowed me to pursue my theological and ministerial studies through widely varied lenses of literature, language, and the arts as well as providing me with the core classes critical to my priestly vocation. As a “second career” student, I’ve been acutely aware of how great a privilege it is to return to my studies surrounded by such diverse and gifted fellow students, generous instructors, and committed staff, and to have access to the libraries, collections, lecture halls, and facilities of Yale University.

Over the past three years, I’ve also been active in the Berkeley community as a house resident and St. Luke’s Committee chair, and have been a member of Yale Women Seminarians. Ecumenical worship at Marquand has been a nourishing and eye opening mainstay of my daily life here. My internship mentors at Christ Church New Haven have contributed hugely to my liturgical, homiletic, and pastoral formation, as well as to my appreciation for incense. 

Last summer, I was ordained to the transitional diaconate by the Diocese of Arizona.  God willing, I’ll be ordained to the priesthood this May. I’ll then begin work, as fate would have it, as the curate of Christ Church of the Ascension Episcopal Church in Paradise Valley, Arizona – the same parish Millie dragged me into six years ago. 

Blue and I will miss our walks up East Rock and through Edgerton Park, and all the surprisingly slow grey squirrels.  The blizzards and hurricanes, not as much.