Dual Degree & Specialized Program

Rev. Ande I. Emmanuel is the Senior Pastor of the United Methodist Church Antakiya Mayodassa Jalingo. He currently serves as the Conference Secretary of the Southern Nigeria Annual Conference. He served four years as the Administrative Assistant to the Nigerian Bishop and the Communications Director for the Nigeria UMC Episcopal Area.

He completed his Master of Divinity at Reform Theological Seminary in Mkar, Nigeria. He completed his Master of Theological Studies at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington DC. While at Wesley, Rev. Ande Emmanuel was an intern with the General Board of Church and Society working with the “Imagine No Malaria” program and following legislative advocacy on Peace Building on Capitol Hill. He was ordained Elder by Bishop Julius C. Trimble at the Iowa UMC Annual Conference. Upon his return to his home country Nigeria, he has worked with the General Board of Church and Society as Minister for Congregational and Community Engagement focusing on peace building and conflict transformation.

He has attended General Conference since 2012 and served as a delegate 2016, 2019, and 2020. He is the founder of Africa Voice of Unity, a caucus that is working for the unity of the United Methodist Church across Africa irrespective of the outcome of the next General Conference.

Rev. Emmanuel is happily married to his wife, Lami Ande Emmanuel and their union is blessed with three children.

I entered the Foreign Service (U.S. Department of State) in 1966 after one year at Union Theological Seminary and two years in the Peace Corps in Ethiopia. My assignments were mainly in Africa, including Senegal, Liberia, Botswana, and Sudan. I served as U.S. Ambassador in Guinea (1990–1993) and Senegal (1996–1999). Between stints, I was Special Presidential Envoy for Liberia (1995–1996), working with African leaders to craft an agreement to end the civil war in Liberia. I retired from the State Department in 1999.

During this period, I was an active layman, involved in various overseas churches—Baptist, Mennonite, Episcopalian—and then at a United Methodist Church in Montgomery County, Maryland. Beginning about 1997, I began occasional preaching. For more than 20 years, I have preached several times annually at Chevy Chase United Methodist Church. In that context, I decided to renew my high school acquaintance with Greek through two semesters at Wesley
Seminary, under the inspired teaching of Dr. Carla Works. A subsequent effort to learn Hebrew was cut short after one semester when I was recalled to duty at the State Department as Senior Advisor to the U.S. Government on Darfur during 2011–2012. My study of Greek has aided my
understanding of the New Testament and has informed the lay preaching, which gives me enormous satisfaction.

When he began his military career, Army Chaplain (LTC) John Scott (DMin ’20) didn’t intend to become a chaplain. He was initially commissioned as an armor officer in 1997 and served as a combat arms officer for 10 years. But at almost every turn, it was chaplains who helped him navigate life.

Scott first found Christ thanks to the chaplain at an ROTC summer training camp in 1996. A couple of years later, he was struggling to finish ranger school, a very intense two-month leadership development program. The regular weekly worship services and the chaplain who led them helped Scott persist and complete the program. In 2003, another chaplain baptized Scott, his wife, and their oldest daughter. It would take a while for his vocational path to shift, but
Scott knew he wanted to do what these chaplains had done for him: to help, support, and counsel service members and their families.

Eventually, Scott found his way to seminary and was recommissioned as an Army Chaplain. He has always pursued education and, after several years working as a chaplain, came to Wesley as part of the Military Chaplaincy Doctor of Ministry program. The robust scholarships for that program played a part in his choice, but Scott says that Wesley’s culture was equally attractive.

The program requires students to take 2 of the 10 required courses on campus, but Scott enjoyed the Wesley community so much that he chose to take 4 classes on-site. “The experience was just really genuine,” he says, citing Dr. Sathi Clarke’s course on interfaith relations and Dr. Douglas Powe’s work on community engagement as two specific Wesley encounters that have shaped his ministry.

These days, Chaplain Scott puts his Wesley degree to work as a chaplain in the National Capitol Region. He has become a regular supporter of the Military Chaplaincy DMin program,
hoping to help others have the same kind of genuine experience that he did.