New Students, Fall 2003

Driven by God’s purpose:
Ann Colley

Ann Colley says she has attended church all of her life, and "at a very young age was baptized into the Body of Christ." Her maternal grandfather was a Southern Baptist preacher, "which meant that we were in church three or four days a week, not including Sunday school and worship, so I know church!" A member of Enon Tabernacle Baptist Church in Philadelphia’s Germantown, Ann has long felt a burning desire to help, comfort and teach people. "It is evident that through the Holy Spirit there has been a call on my life for so very long," Ann says. At times, she confesses, "I did my own thing" and was disobedient to God. "But I never left the church because I had a deep yearning to know God, to worship God and to serve God," she continues, and she believes God has shielded her from harm and danger "even when that harm and danger came from myself." She believes God’s generous mercy was not for her "but for the edification of God’s kingdom. LTSP will be my formal training ground now to couple with my less formal training and experiences," she says. She hopes her seminary study will "plant Good News of the Gospel for the rest of the world to see Jesus in me through Word and deed."