Notable Pentecostal Leaders from Secular Universities

It struck me the oth­er day that there are a lot of Pentecostal/Charismatic/Third Wave lead­ers with degrees from sec­u­lar uni­ver­si­ties instead of Bible colleges/Christian lib­er­al arts schools, so I start­ed putting a list togeth­er.

The list is heavy on the Assem­blies of God because those are the cir­cles I run in, and it’s also min­is­ter-heavy for the same rea­son. I’d love to add some busi­ness lead­ers. I’m leav­ing out Chi Alpha mis­sion­ar­ies because we’d swamp the list.

In alpha­bet­i­cal order:
For Their Under­grad

1. Bret Allen (pas­tor, Bethel Church of San Jose) – East­ern Wash­ing­ton Uni­ver­si­ty
2. John Ashcroft

   wick­er man the free down­load

   (politi­cian and author) – Yale for under­grad, Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go for law school

3. Rocky Bar­ra — (pas­tor of Con­nec­tion Church in Can­ton, MI) — East­ern Michi­gan Uni­ver­si­ty (for both under­grad and mas­ter’s)
4. Glen Berteau (pas­tor of Cal­vary Tem­ple in Modesto, CA) – Louisiana Tech
5. John Bevere (author and con­fer­ence speak­er) – Pur­due
6. Brady Boyd (pas­tor of New Life Church in Col­orado Springs) — Louisiana Tech
7. James Brad­ford (pas­tor of Cen­tral Assem­bly in Spring­field, MO) — Uni­ver­si­ty of Min­neso­ta (all the way through Ph.D.)
8. Frank Cargill (dis­trict super­in­ten­dent of Okla­homa) — Okla­homa State Uni­ver­si­ty (under­grad), Uni­ver­si­ty of Okla­homa (master’s),and the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cen­tral Okla­homa (anoth­er mas­ter’s).
9. Den­nis Cheek (pastor/church planter & Vice Pres­i­dent for the Kauf­mann Foun­da­tion) — Tow­son Uni­ver­si­ty (under­grad), anoth­er under­grad from Excel­sior Col­lege, a mas­ter’s Uni­ver­si­ty of Mary­land Bal­ti­more Coun­ty, a Ph.D. in cur­ricu­lum and instruction/science edu­ca­tion from Penn­syl­va­nia State Uni­ver­si­ty, and a Ph.D. in the­ol­o­gy from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Durham.
10. Ali­cia Chole (author and con­fer­ence speak­er) – UT Austin (through her mas­ter’s)
11. Earl Creps (church planter, author, edu­ca­tor) – Uni­ver­si­ty of Pitts­burg for under­grad, North­west­ern for Ph.D.
12. Mark Driscoll (pas­tor of Mars Hill in Seat­tle) — Wash­ing­ton State Uni­ver­si­ty
13. Den­ny Duron (pas­tor of Shreve­port Com­mu­ni­ty Church in LA) – Louisiana Tech
14. Jonathan Gains­brugh (evan­ge­list and author) — Uni­ver­si­ty of Vir­ginia
15. Randy Gar­cia (pas­tor of Fortress Church in San Anto­nio, TX) — Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas at San Anto­nio
16. Paul Goulet (pas­tor of Inter­na­tion­al Church of Las Vegas) — Uni­ver­si­ty of Ottowa
17. Wayne Gru­dem (the­olo­gian) — Har­vard
18. Stan­ley Hor­ton

    free woman s rage a

    (the­olo­gian and author) — B.S., Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, S.T.M. from Har­vard

19. Roger Houtsma (founder of World Out­reach Min­istries) — UC Berke­ley
20. Tim John­son (Con­gress­man) – Uni­ver­si­ty of Illi­nois – Champaign/Urbana
21. Steve Lim tam­ing of the shrew the down­load (Aca­d­e­m­ic Dean at AGTS), UC Berke­ley
22. Mike McClaflin (Africa Region­al Direc­tor for Assem­blies of God World Mis­sions) — Uni­ver­si­ty of Wyoming
23. Lee McFar­land (pas­tor of Radi­ant Church in Sur­prise, AZ) — Uni­ver­si­ty of Col­orado
24. Mar­vin Miller (direc­tor of Rayne Project Min­istries) — Whit­ter Col­lege
25. Don­nie Moore (evan­ge­list) – Uni­ver­si­ty of the Pacif­ic
26. J. P. More­land (apol­o­gist and schol­ar) — Uni­ver­si­ty of Mis­souri
27. Mar­i­lyn Mus­grave (Con­gress­woman) — Col­orado State Uni­ver­si­ty
28. Rich Nathan – (pas­tor of Vine­yard Com­mu­ni­ty Church of Colom­bus, OH) – Case West­ern Reserve Uni­ver­si­ty
29. Sarah Palin — (politi­cian) — Uni­ver­si­ty of Ida­ho
30. Ray Rachels – (South­ern Cal­i­for­nia Dis­trict Super­in­ten­dent) – Troy State Uni­ver­si­ty
31. Cecil Robeck (schol­ar) — San Jose City Col­lege (for his AA)
32. Mark Rut­land – (pres­i­dent of South­east­ern Col­lege) – Uni­ver­si­ty of Mary­land
33. Antho­ny Sco­ma (pas­tor of South­west Fam­i­ly Fel­low­ship) — Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas (Austin)
34. Char­lie Self — under­grad and Ph.D. from UC San­ta Cruz (break for Grad­u­ate The­o­log­i­cal Union in the mid­dle)
35. Sean Smith (evan­ge­list) – Uni­ver­si­ty of the Pacif­ic
36. Zol­lie Smith
    down­load the mum­my tomb of the drag­on emper­or that old feel­ing online

    (Exec­u­tive Direc­tor AG US Mis­sions) – Flori­da State Uni­ver­si­ty

37. Sam Storms — Uni­ver­si­ty of Okla­homa
38. James Watt (politi­cian) – Uni­ver­si­ty of Wyoming

For Grad Work Only

1. Chris Carter (schol­ar — APTS) — PhD from Aberdeen Uni­ver­si­ty
2. John Carter (schol­ar — APTS) — PhD from Uni­ver­si­ty of Illi­nois in edu­ca­tion­al psy­chol­o­gy
3. Roli dela Cruz (schol­ar, APTS) — PhD in tex­tu­al crit­i­cism from Birm­ing­ham Uni­ver­si­ty
4. Gor­don Fee (schol­ar and author) — Ph.D. from USC
5. Richard Ham­mar (AG legal coun­sel) – Har­vard Law
6. Rich Israel (schol­ar) — Ph.D. from Clare­mont
7. Todd Labute (schol­ar — APTS) — PhD from Mar­quette Uni­ver­si­ty
8. Everett Wil­son (schol­ar) — Ph.D. from Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty
9. George O. Wood (Gen­er­al Super­in­ten­dent of the Assem­blies of God) — Law degree from West­ern State Uni­ver­si­ty Col­lege of Law in Fuller­ton, Cal­i­for­nia
10. Amos Yong (the­olo­gian) — M.A. from Port­land State and Ph.D. from Boston Uni­ver­si­ty

Why com­pile a list like this?

First, if you’re a stu­dent at a sec­u­lar school don’t assume that you can’t go into voca­tion­al min­istry. As this list shows, some of the most well-known min­is­ters in the Pen­te­costal world come from the same place you do. And the trend isn’t abat­ing — when I was in sem­i­nary I learned that half of my class­mates at AGTS had gone to non-Chris­t­ian schools for their under­grad just as I had.

Sec­ond, if you’re a youth pas­tor (or a par­ent) don’t be scared to send your kids with a min­istry call­ing off to sec­u­lar schools to major in busi­ness or physics some­thing. Bible col­leges aren’t the only route to min­is­te­r­i­al prepa­ra­tion — and for many peo­ple they’re not the best route.

Third, don’t feel alone if you’re in min­istry and grad­u­at­ed from a sec­u­lar uni­ver­si­ty. At least in the Assem­blies of God it’s pret­ty easy to feel iso­lat­ed, because they have all these Bible col­lege alum­ni reunions at every big min­is­ter’s gath­er­ing and there’s nev­er a gath­er­ing for “went to a pagan school.” You may feel alone, but you’re not even close to alone.

Any­way, there are no doubt dozens more who aren’t com­ing to mind right now. I wel­come con­tri­bu­tions to the list — leave any updates in the com­ment sec­tion or email/facebook me. (If you’re read­ing this on Face­book, by the way, you’re only read­ing a copy. Click on the link at the top to go to the orig­i­nal where you can leave a com­ment). When you make a sug­ges­tion, please indi­cate your source (per­son­al con­ver­sa­tion, pub­lished bio, heard them men­tion it in a ser­mon, friend of a friend, etc).

edit 3/20/2008: first update is Mike McClaflin — thanks to Den­nis and Jen for this!
edit 3/21/2008: Rich sug­gest­ed Roger Houtsma along with Gor­don Fee and George O Wood (I’m leav­ing those two off for now because only their doc­tor­ates that came from a sec­u­lar school — try­ing to decide what to do with that). I’m also leav­ing off Mark Bat­ter­son for now because he start­ed his under­grad at Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go but fin­ished at a Bible col­lege. I also added a third rea­son for the list.
edit 3/21/2008: Char­lie also sug­gest­ed sev­er­al Ph.Ds, so I’ve start­ed a sec­ond list of those who did grad work at non-Chris­t­ian schools.
edit 3/28/2008: Brady Boyd, Mar­vin Miller, JP More­land, Mark Driscoll, Sam Storms, and Wayne Gru­dem added
edit 6/18/2008: Frank Cargill, Den­nis Cheek, Randy Gar­cia, Jonathan Gains­brugh added
edit 7/1/2008: added Antho­ny Sco­ma — doh! How did I over­look my bud?
edit 7/9/2008: added Rocky Bar­ra — thanks to David Moore for the point­er
edit 7/24/2008: removed Doug Peter­son and added Roli dela Cruz, Chris Carter, Todd Labute, and John Carter per Eka­pu­tra Tupamahu’s sug­ges­tions in the com­ments below. I haven’t tracked down a bio on each per­son, so their under­grad degrees might also be from sec­u­lar schools.
edit 8/29/2008: added Sarah Palin, gov­er­nor of Alas­ka and VP nom­i­nee.