Just as she reached retirement, Wendy Farone, Ph.D., discovered a call to something new. She hesitated to pursue it at first, thinking to herself, “I’m retired! I’m 65; many pastors are retiring from ministry at this age, and I’d be just moving in.” Wendy’s pastor, however, reminded her that “God doesn’t call you because you’re young; He calls you because you’re a child of God and to share the ministry.” Eventually, she came around, saying, “I always laugh and think, ‘You know what? Jesus did His ministry in three years. I suppose if I’ve got three years, I’m right there with Him.”
A New Chapter
To respond to the call, Wendy filled in an application to study at PTS. “I thought, ‘OK, I’ll start seminary and I’ll just do the certificate of theology – I’ll get a better feel for things, and maybe we’ll call that good.’ Then I thought, ‘Oh no, I don’t feel as if I know enough about this yet.’ So I switched to the two-year Master of Arts in Pastoral Studies. But in that next year, I still felt I was called further. So, finally, I enrolled in the M.Div. program.”
Wendy’s willingness to try something new helped her refine a general sense of call to a more specific form of ministry. “When I was searching for a Field Education placement, my assistant bishop kept saying to me, ‘Alright, here’s your thing!’ And I said, ‘Well, I don’t really know, but I don’t want to run a church.” But once Wendy decided to give a pastoral internship a try, she found a fit and discovered a sense of purpose in a way she hadn’t expected. “I fell in love with the people in this role, and I thought, ‘You know, I think this is what I’m truly called to do.’ And my bishop laughs and says, ‘Yeah, we knew.’”
A Welcoming Learning Community
Why PTS? Wendy says she felt welcomed by the community in a number of ways, including age diversity, denominational diversity, and supportive relationships with members of the faculty.
“I love the idea that there are a multitude of denominational, and some non-denominational, folks there, and the seminary meets their needs individually. It’s really important, I think, that folks understand that just because it’s a Presbyterian seminary, doesn’t mean you have to be Presbyterian to go there. I was raised Lutheran, and I’m still a Lutheran. Whatever your denominational background, you will be fed for sure.”
“Another thing that really strikes me about PTS was that I didn’t just see young faces. There were many folks who were there for different reasons and different aspects of their lives. I was welcomed with open arms. The student-teacher relationship felt like a peer relationship—I felt like I was seeking, and the professors’ guidance that I got was, ‘Oh, yeah, this is tough. So, hang in there.’ ‘Let me help explain that to you.’ Whether you’re a person in midlife or a younger person just out of undergrad, we’re all just learners of the Word. I just feel very at home here.”
A Calling Which Integrates Personal Identity
As a person in her 60s, Wendy was not interested in “starting over.” A second career, much less attending seminary, was not on her radar. “For a long time, I keep saying to folks, ‘I’m retired. I’m happily retired. Retired.” But once she decided to follow the call, she found that ministry is a field which does not demand “starting from scratch.” She discovered that her passions, expertise, and skills developed in her first career not only integrated into her ministry but elevated it as she offered her unique self to serve the Lord. “I’m discovering that the way I preach makes sense to the hearers. I came from a 30-year education background, so my whole goal is to help people further their understanding, and I can make things understandable to others. So when I preach, I bring the Scripture to life, and I bring attention to stories (Jesus was a storyteller, after all). I apply things that I learned in my education career to my ministry vocation.”
A Refreshed Perspective, A Deepened Faith, and Treasured Relationships
When asked what she is taking away from her seminary experience, Wendy names depth of knowledge about scripture, new energy for ministry, and a clarified perspective on what it means to be “God’s hands” in the world.
“I needed to learn to see the world ‘through the eyes of Christ’ rather than ‘through the eyes of Wendy.’ A very Lutheran phrase is ‘God’s work. Our hands.’ We use our hands to do God’s work. We all know we’re wonderful inside the church, but when life occurs ‘out there,’ how do you respond? And I don’t mean activism; that’s not my gig. My call is to have your Christ-like spirit travel with you wherever you go. Things like opening doors for people, or when somebody says something nasty to you, not saying something nasty or sarcastic back. It’s creating human beings being human in a world that is filled with sin. So that being the case, I don’t have to stand on a pulpit outside and scream about people who don’t think like I do or think like my church does. But my call is to love people by saying, ‘This world is just as beautiful when you look through the eyes of Christ.’”
“The journey through seminary—little by little, course by course, experience by experience—also allowed me to recognize what Scripture meant in real time. Like, ‘What’s it mean to me now?’ And, ‘Oh, that was out of context when it was embroidered on a pillow.’ Learning the Bible’s ‘vocabulary’—metaphor, simile, references—helped me lean into the to the Christian tradition from a biblical perspective. For me it was eye opening, because I’ve attempted to read the Bible a lot of times, and I’ll just tell you, it is tough. Sorting it out on your own is an impossibility, I think—at least, it was for me. The tradition is pretty clear that God is inexhaustible, the Bible is living, and, even aside from that, I’m never going to have loving my neighbors fully figured out either. The learning is perpetual; I can’t retire from it.”
Wendy says she also treasures the lifelong relationships she forged in her time at PTS. “Something else that was really revelatory was mission trips. Our seminary is one of the few that has that requirement. My group ended up going to Appalachia, and we got snowed in for two days! It was incredibly wonderful. I’ll probably have lifelong friendships with some of the folks who were on that trip and some who we met when we were down there. We spoke to people who’d lived there all their lives, we saw the tragedies of the coal mine, we went down into a coal mine and felt what it was like. It wasn’t a foreign country, but it might as well have been, when you have lived in a place that looks nothing like that. That type of immersion and seeing God in the world is critically important, because, again, you can’t just sit in church and leave it there.”
Living My Life Story
Now happily looking forward to more time in ministry, Wendy laughs fondly about the surprising journey God has taken her on. “Who knew? I’m telling you, if you told me this, nine, 10 years ago, I would have said, ‘That’s not happening.’ And now I’m like, ‘Oh, yeah, give me more.’ That’s how it is with God. No matter what age or position you’re in or what stage of life, if you are called and choose to answer that call, you will do what you’re charged to do in this world. Everyone has their story, and the beautiful thing is you can share that story and live into it.”
Next Steps
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Dr. Wendy Farone ’21/’25 is the vicar of Faith Lutheran Church (White Oak, Pa.). Before attending seminary, Wendy had a 30-year career in literacy education, including 12 years as an elementary classroom teacher and Title 1 reading specialist. She served for 18 years as an educational consultant with the PA Training & Technical Assistance Network (PaTTAN), where she was the Western PA regional lead in literacy, and for 10 years as a private, nationwide trainer, training other educators in an evidence-based approach to teaching reading, spelling, and writing. In 2023, she provided testimony advocating for evidence-based literacy instruction before the Pennsylvania Senate. She holds an M.Div. from Pittsburgh Theological Seminary and a Ph.D. in reading teacher education from Walden University, as well as LETRS and DIBELS certifications.