During the COVID-19 pandemic, Jimbo Tucker was serving as a senior pastor but felt a call to serve more than one church. Unsure of what that looked like, Tucker, who earned a Master of Divinity (MDiv) from Samford University’s Beeson Divinity School in 2005, began to work with nonprofit organizations, notably Birmingham-based Neverthirst, which brings clean water and the Gospel to unreached people groups.

Still wanting to do more with local churches, Tucker eventually landed at Compassion International, which facilitates the sponsoring of children worldwide to bring them out of poverty, meet material needs, provide education and other resources, all while sharing the good news of Jesus Christ.

Tucker serves the world from his home in Birmingham, a city he once thought he’d never want to move back to.

After spending his post-college years in the business world, Tucker had joined a church staff full time, and realized he needed seminary training in order to serve effectively.

A native of Birmingham, Tucker had narrowed his choices down to Beeson, Denver Theological Seminary and Dallas Theological Seminary, with the latter seeming the obvious choice.

But as he sat in professor Frank Thielman’s New Testament class, he felt a stirring of the Holy Spirit calling him to Beeson.

“It’s not what he was teaching, but how he was teaching it,” said Tucker. “I knew what it was like to make a grade. But I wasn’t going to seminary to make a grade or earn a degree. I was going to seminary to get an education to be a pastor.”

Beeson’s interdenominational spirit was a key factor in Tucker’s decision to attend the school, which better prepared him for ministry, he said.

Beeson was “big enough to have all I wanted from an academic side, but small enough to be cared for,” Tucker said.

Now, in his role at Compassion, Tucker works with large churches in America, most which have 700 members or more, helping them engage in what God is doing through the indigenous local church abroad. Training at Beeson helped him learn how to navigate differences between denominations, which he encounters often in his role.

“We want to build up the local church and supporting nations so we can build up the local church in developing nations,” Tucker said.

With almost 20 years in pastoral ministry and his nonprofit experience, Tucker has been in a variety of ministries, which he said has allowed him to see more of the “glories of the mundane.” Tucker credits Beeson for teaching him to look for the Lord and His work instead of fixating on mapping out a career path.

“I’ve been able to see the beauty of the local church, to see the followers of Christ who won’t ever be famous pursue His glory, work for His kingdom,” Tucker said. “The world is fleeting, but the kingdom is forever. It forced me to wrestle in a healthy way: which guy am I going to be? Am I going to try and put God in a box, or am I going to trust Him to do what He can do?”