After years of avoiding pastoral ministry, Jen Shenk felt a calling that she needed to say “yes” to. Her position as campus pastor officially began on Aug. 1, 2023, after she served as interim pastor in April and May 2023.
This post is part of Mennonite Church USA’ Follow Jesus series, which highlights how individuals, congregations, conferences and organizations are living into discipleship today.
By Sadie Brenneman
As a young person, Jen Shenk, campus pastor at Goshen College, never wanted to be behind the pulpit. Her goal was to be a teacher, despite the push from friends and family to pursue seminary. Twenty years later, Shenk is exactly where she was called to be: in a small office on the first floor of Wyse Hall, with the door wide open, thinking of ways to help people access the divine and bring them into view of themselves or God.
Jen Shenk
Shenk’s hesitation toward the role of “pastor” came from strong connotations related to women in leadership within the church.
“I didn’t feel like I fit the typical persona of a woman in pastoral leadership at the time … which I perceived as someone in mid-life, no-nonsense and heavily spiritual — almost unrelatable and on an entirely different level,” Shenk said.
In contrast, Shenk radiates a lively aura that shines authentically through her bubbly and comical personality, blond curls and bright blue eyes — no wire-rimmed glasses. And, of course, she has a strong sense of style.
On Wednesday mornings, in the College Mennonite Church chapel, Shenk, often styled in a sharp blazer, moves gracefully from talking with students in the pews before chapel, to the pulpit, to the floor, and occasionally, sitting down to play the grand piano and lead the group in singing.
Her journey to the GC campus pastor role began as many new callings begin for Shenk:
“The Spirit’s movement is often not a warm, fuzzy feeling for me. It’s more a sense of discomfort or restlessness, like something just doesn’t feel right — frustration almost.”
Shenk felt this for the first time when she was mothering her three young boys. She loved nurturing and supporting them, and even on her worst days, her love for being a stay-at-home mom ran deep. At the same time, she felt an unsettling inner pull, one that she would later recognize as a call to something new.
In an interview with the Mennonite Spiritual Directors Network for Menno Snapshots in 2021, Shenk said, “It was like I was eating the same old meat-and-potatoes diet, and I knew I needed something more … maybe not more variety … but more depth.”
Shenk pursued photography as a creative outlet and loved the social aspect of photographing people and families. At the same time, it was not as fulfilling for her as her involvement with the church, specifically chairing the worship commission at Belmont Mennonite Church, in Elkhart, Indiana. Despite the gratification she felt, she wasn’t getting paid.
“Meanwhile, I had this thing with photography that I was getting paid for. And it was fun, but it was not deeply gratifying,” Shenk said.
She wished that she could find a career for her worship work in the church. And one day, in conversation with her spiritual director, they asked, “Well, why couldn’t you?”
Shenk organized a clearness committee to provide direction and further discernment on her career journey. The group included several of her closest friends and family, who were there to be silent, ask the occasional question and allow Shenk to uncover the layers of this big question with new perspective and clarity.
“Sometimes, the questions don’t seem like they make sense, but they get at something that you couldn’t really get out on your own,” Shenk said. From the clearness committee, Shenk left with a fresh point of view and a clear sense of what to do. Discerning her next steps required, “simply saying yes to what presented itself.”
“I kept saying yes. I didn’t have an outcome in mind. They didn’t say, ‘Jen, you’re going to be a pastor.’ It was just, ‘Keep saying yes.’”
The first yes that followed came from a listing of seminary classes at Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary. This yes worked in her favor, considering her first step on campus was the right step, and she knew it.
“I remember sitting around the table with all these other students, and they were from all these different countries. And everybody was there because of a deep sense of calling,” said Shenk. “I felt like I was sitting around a table at the United Nations or something. I remember thinking, ‘This is the kingdom of God, right here.’”
After a few years of seminary, Shenk took a pastoral position at Kern Road Mennonite Church, in South Bend, Indiana, which was the next right step for her. The job held everything she loved, from leading worship to working with young adults. Still resisting the role of pastor, Shenk hoped they might go for the title of “minister of worship”; they didn’t.
“I thought, ‘Oh, my word, “pastoral team,”’” Shenk said. “Wow, that sounds really weighty, you know.”
Despite the slightly daunting title of pastor, Shenk felt fulfilled during her time at Kern Road. The role was everything she was good at and lifegiving. Since many of Shenk’s yeses worked in her favor, she thought hard about whether a yes had ever been the wrong step.
“[Saying yes is] a further refining and clarifying process. And so I don’t think you can ever take a wrong step. I really don’t,” said Shenk. Even if a yes leads to a no, Shenk is certain that the process leads you to a deeper yes: the truth of who you are.
“I compare finding your calling to the dating process — you can say yes to somebody and go out with them for a while. Maybe it works for a while, or maybe it doesn’t, [but] it still leads you into a deeper yes of who you are.”
Four years after taking the job at Kern Road, Shenk felt that familiar restlessness again. Meanwhile, she also set her sights on the GC campus pastor position that had opened.
The first time she applied, in 2021, Shenk didn’t get the job. She was late to the application process but was motivated to be ready for the next time the job was open. Again, Shenk saw the pursuit as a clarification of her true intentions and that it was time for something new.
In the meantime, Shenk took classes at the seminary full-time and waited for the next right thing. Two years later, Gilberto Perez, vice president for student life and Hispanic serving initiatives and dean of students at Goshen College, approached Shenk about applying for the interim pastor position. Soon after, Shenk became the permanent campus pastor at GC.
“It was just this beautiful coming together of all my previous life experiences,” Shenk said. So many pieces fit for Shenk, from leading chapel, to administrative responsibilities, to the spiritual mothering that comes from working with young people.
Shenk’s career journey took a few turns — some yeses led to nos, and those nos provided clarity for Shenk. But amid the twists, she held steady, as if she were walking in a labyrinth.
In an interview with The Record, Goshen College’s independent student newspaper, Shenk described the labyrinth analogy further: “The only job of the [person] walking the labyrinth is to just keep walking, knowing that eventually you will reach the center. In a labyrinth, you cannot make a wrong turn. There are no dead ends. You will never be lost.”
Similarly, with her career journey, she said, “Sometimes the yeses took me farther away, and sometimes they led me closer, but no matter where your path leads, you’re always being held. The center holds.”
“Even if your path includes some potholes and bumps and twists and turns. You’re never outside of the reach of God, ever.”
____________________________________
____________________________________
The views and opinions expressed in this blog belong to the author and are not intended to represent the views of the MC USA Executive Board or staff.
Interested in submitting a blog for Menno Snapshots? Please see our blog guidelines here.