After serving in the pastorate for fourteen years, I joined the staff at Insight for Living in 2005. In my current role as an executive vice president, I oversee the ministry’s content alongside a team of creative writers, editors, and pastors. We write all the print, Web, and electronic resources that complement Chuck Swindoll’s broadcast and meet the spiritual needs of hundreds of thousands of believers across the globe.
My wife, Cathy, and I married at the end of my first semester at DTS—more than twenty-three years ago. Today we have two daughters in college and two Labradors still at home.
From 1989 to 2004, I enjoyed three dispensations at DTS—including an MACE, which I relinquished after earning the ThM, and a DMin. My fondest memories of DTS include singing my heart out in Chafer Chapel while Chaplain Bryan’s red face glowed behind his trumpet, sitting under the splendid teaching of Walvoord, Pentecost, Toussaint, Hendricks, Bailey, and Lawrence, and learning Hebrew from Dorian Coover-Cox and Rick Taylor. These taught me how to learn—skills I use every day.
Magnificent memories came from study trips to Israel, where I learned that context includes geography—the stage upon which God’s redemptive plan took place. Dallas Seminary has contributed to my life far more than degrees and Bible knowledge. The single greatest value from my time at DTS came from the spiritual underpinning I gained as a result of God’s Word explained to me. The school discipled me in my walk with Christ. I learned what it means to be a man of God as well as a man of the Word. The professors modeled truth with grace and took time to talk with me.
I cannot imagine my life—much less, my ministry—without Dallas Seminary’s essential contribution. Would I do it all over again? Yes, absolutely! Starting today.
Visit Wayne’s blog at www.waynestiles.com to see his passion for connecting the Bible and its lands to life. He also writes a weekly column in the Jerusalem Post, and has published two devotional books, Walking in the Footsteps of Jesus and Going Places with God, revealing his lifelong passion to connect the Bible and its lands to life.