Alum Profile

Rev. Dr. Don Davis, Founder & Director, The Urban Ministry Institute

Don Davis '88 M.A. '89 was not the typical Wheaton undergraduate. When he arrived at Wheaton, he was married with three children and had been in ministry for ten years. He had most recently been serving as director of Wichita World Impact, supervising a staff that included Wheaton graduates.

"I came to Wheaton because I really believed in fostering the life of the mind, and Wheaton had such a tremendous reputation for solid intellectual work," says Dr. Davis. "Because I was different, Wheaton gave me the flexibility to pursue a bachelor's and a master's at the same time."

Being "different" also meant that he came to Wheaton with a well-developed theology of leadership and specific questions.

"I wanted to know, how do the urban poor learn, and what is their aesthetic, their sense of faith? The vast majority of the world's population is urban," he says. "In the U.S alone, there are 37-40 million unchurched urban poor. There are untold hundreds of congregations that serve people in violent, neo-pagan communities that most of us would never even walk into. These communities are not amenable to middle-class evangelicalism. I wanted to learn, how do we cross the barriers of culture, class, and race?"

Professor after professor helped him work out these issues in a theological context. "Timothy Phillips, then head of the graduate theology department and also my mentor, shaped me thematically," he says. "Alan Johnson was formative for me as a scholar. Bob Yarbrough to this day is a staple, and Andy Hill engaged with me in countless conversations.

"The single most important idea came in understanding that there is a real connection for the urban poor with the great traditions of the faith. Bob Webber scoped out for me the major elements of a distinctively evangelical and yet ancient spirituality, one that is culturally liberating and unashamedly apostolic. He helped me understand the tradition behind the traditions, one that keeps the main thing the main thing."

This groundbreaking work still influences Dr. Davis's thinking and approach today. He is now the director of World Impact's Urban Ministry Institute (TUMI), a research and training center he founded, which is dedicated to providing a classic seminary-level education to those who serve the urban church.

Typically, the students are seasoned pastors, church planters, and counselors who are bi-vocational and poor. The center runs satellites around the U.S. and in other countries, where students complete a 16-module curriculum that is oriented around student availability and costs $10 per credit hour.

"The curriculum is deeply informed by the theology I learned at Wheaton. Our goal is to help people become better equipped theologically, to be better counselors, pastors, and church planters." says Dr. Davis.

Demand for the program has been remarkable. There are now 30 satellites and hundreds of students. The satellite program in Ellsworth, Kansas, has been so successful that it recently caught the attention of Prison Fellowship. A pilot program with Prison Fellowship is now getting off the ground.

Whether the topic is pilot programs, or urban ministry, or the role of the church, Don Davis speaks with depth and charisma: "The beautiful thing about being a Christian is that all of a sudden, life has cosmic significance. Certainly the church has flaws, but there's no other institution that has served as a pillar and buttress of the truth through history. We're the ones bearing the banner of Christ."

And when talking about leadership, his reflections turn to Wheaton: "Our society will go as high or as low as the leaders we produce. There is no question that Wheaton is a force in producing leaders who are deeply Christian, spiritually mature, and technically competent."