I was raised in a pastor’s home. My Dad was a journalist and was fully involved in our church as a bi-vocational minister. My mother a businessperson was also a Sunday school teacher. Our home church became one of the largest and fastest-growing churches in Africa. I had many questions that needed answers, like any curious young person of my time. However, many times when I asked questions about our church doctrines, I was shut down or told I was too inquisitive. So, I set out to find the answers myself. This was one reason I left my classes in engineering to move to Bible college in 1993. I was asking questions that many of my friends were asking and I became passionate about answering those questions.
By the time I was done with my undergraduate studies in theology, I moved to study Biblical theology at the Theological College of Northern Nigeria. While in the master’s program I began to have much more questions than when I got into the Theological College. These questions led me to work on my biblical languages at the time. With an additional master’s degree in New Testament from the University of Jos, I concluded that I was poised to begin a fruitful work as a lecturer and pastor by engaging others in the things that I had learned over the years.
The desire to engage with people on theological issues in the Pentecostal Christianity of Nigerian was very frustrating at times. I began to reflect on how I would be able to mentor and lead young pastors and scholars in a more gentle and less combative way. This desire led me to begin a study in leadership and biblical preaching as a Beeson International scholar at Asbury Theological Seminary.
At this time, the suspicion about theological education in the West as being highly liberal and empty was prevalent among many Nigerian scholars and leaders. So, I was skeptical about any advanced study in the United States. However, since this program was a fully funded Doctor of Ministry, I obliged. I was pleased to find the interactions with professors and colleagues at Asbury Theological Seminary were both very academically stimulating and practically relevant. I concluded that one could still study in the West without necessarily becoming “liberal.”
Amid this, I joined the Anglican church in Nigeria since I was recruited as a lecturer at their graduate seminary. They were not intimidated with wrestling with theological debates and many paradoxes that I was wrestling with. I felt much more comfortable with the Anglicans in Nigeria, and they were very welcoming and more ecumenical than my Pentecostal friends. I also noticed that my doctoral program at the university in Nigeria did not demand as much reading and critical thinking as my Doctor of Ministry program demanded. This was why I then decided to abandon a Nigerian PhD program in favor of a PhD the United States, again at Asbury. I needed a program that would give me the research skills but also the wide approach to learning, which I got from the various professor that taught me and supervised my assistantship.
Today, I am reaping the reward of a training not just with some practical components that make me a better pastor but also the intellectual component that makes an academic. I do not consider myself a dry academic, but a lively one!
Babatunde Oladimeji is the Pastor of Chardon United Methodist Church in Chadron, NE. He hold a DMin and a PhD in Intercultural Studies from Asbury Theological Seminary. Tunde is a member of the St. Augustine Fellowship of the Center for Pastor Theologians.
