An engineer by trade and a seasoned practitioner in non-profit development work, Ben Tshin had long considered what it would mean to be a missionary. He and his wife Julia, a doctor, had visited several countries with the express intention of discerning where God could send them. There was no “burning bush” except the recommendation to “take some seminary studies.”
As they were living in Toronto, Wycliffe College seemed a viable choice. “Is this a faithful biblical place to go?” Ben asked some Wycliffe alumni. Their answers led to both enrolling. Ben started with the MTSD program, Julie the MTS. Their first class was New Testament 1. “We’d come for communion, and dinner, and stay for the class!” he remembers. As mature students who lived close to the college and were closer in age to some of their professors than to their fellow students, Ben and Julia found it easy to continue growing and learning in their faith—through course work, over dinners and lunches, through conversations.
Studying part time, this cumulative experience of mentorship shaped Ben’s concurrent journeys into Anglicanism and into ordained ministry. He and Julia had just begun going to an Anglican church, and his MTSD courses, while excellent, had not fully stretched his skill set. ‘I was already a practitioner through my work in international development,” he says, “and I wanted to learn more.”
“Would you consider ordained ministry?” his advisors and professors asked. With those prompts held close, Ben switched into the MDiv program. Having classmates who became ordained ministers, and professors who both taught at Wycliffe and ministered as ordained priests, Tshin could look ahead two years and “see what being an ordained Anglican priest would look like.”
Learning about the emphasis in the Anglican priesthood of word and sacrament, Ben was worried about preaching – he had never preached. He had his first experiences preaching through MDiv internships, and at Wycliffe: ‘It was in my preaching class at Wycliffe that I explored and found my voice,” he remembers. “That was my first Aha moment as I considered ordination. I could preach! It had been an undiscovered skill, and yet it was strong, and it wasn’t the area of weakness I had thought it would be. I now knew I could move forward.”
Ordained in 2022, Ben is associate priest at St Paul’s Bloor Street (SPBS) in downtown Toronto, three subway stops away from Wycliffe College. Part of his ministry sees him coordinating five different weekly worship services. “It’s amazing to serve in this way for a priest who’s only been ordained for four years,” he says. “This works with my skills learned as an engineer and in international development, and I have the gift of administration too. All are being used to their fullest.”
Ben is the first to admit that Wycliffe played a seminal role in his discernment. “Wycliffe ‘turns on the light’ to show you all the different doors down the ministry hallway and says: ‘Poke your head in and go into each room. Explore if that calling is for you.’ Wycliffe welcomes all denominations and is open to a variety of traditions,” he says. “They make it safe to explore your giftedness, and to see where God wants to take you next.”
