“A Kind Thing That the Lord Did”: Dr. Simon Stokes (MDiv, MAC ‘13), Isaac Jones (MDiv ‘27)
What happens when a seminary shapes not just one generation, but three? Dr. Simon Stokes (MDiv, MAC ‘13), Lead Pastor of Church of the Good Shepherd (PCA) in Durham, North Carolina, and MDiv student Isaac Jones share the remarkable story of how Covenant Seminary's gospel-centered formation created a cycle of mentorship spanning decades—from campus ministry to the halls of Covenant Seminary and back again.
Simon Stokes (SS): I had just become a Christian when I went to college at Emory, and I had just gotten into Reformed theology, and they had just started an RUF at Emory. And the guy who was in charge of it and getting it off the ground was a Covenant grad—a guy named Jeremy Jones—and he was really the first person to help me understand what the gospel was. He would sit with me and he would read the Bible with me. He would explain theology to me and do it in an in-depth way and do it in a very personal, one-on-one way where it was conversational. And I think I felt very seen in a way that I had never been seen.
Some of it was because he was just a good pastor, and that's just what good pastors do. Some of it was because I think he'd imbibed a lot of the ethos of Covenant. I saw that a lot in professors like Richard Winter, Dan Zink, Jerram Barrs, Dan Doriani—people who have an intense interest in people, but they're so deeply rooted in the Lord and in what his Scripture says, that when they meet people in hard things or very sad things, they can approach those people with a sense of gospel confidence.
That, to me, was a big part of the ethos of Covenant, was caring a tremendous amount about the scholarship and the study and the learning—it's a seminary—but also alongside of that, understanding that we want to form pastors who have a heart and who see people relationally and care for people relationally. And the only way to teach people that kind of grace is to give them that kind of grace and to walk with them through things that are not easy and show them how to be a pastor in the middle of that for other people.
Isaac Jones (IJ): My dad planted an RUF at Emory in Atlanta when I was about three or four years old, and Simon Stokes was one of the first students my dad met when he was trying to plant RUF at Emory. Simon was 18 at the time, a freshman, and so I'm four years old, and my favorite student that would come over and play with me growing up was Simon Stokes.
What I remember of him at 18 and what you see in him now, there's some characteristics that are still there, like his laugh. He just has the most cacophonous—it's this giant, loud, bellowing laugh he has. He would play with me all the time, and it was really formative for me actually to have a believing, cool guy like that to take an interest in me. Cut to when I got out of college and decided to do the RUF internship. They placed me at UNC with Simon, and so I got to do three years of ministry under Simon, and he got to be my boss. And for my dad to have been his campus minister and then for him to be mine was a really cool, full circle moment, and, I would say, another big influence on how I ended up at Covenant. So many times in conversations with Simon, he was always quick to point out the good he experienced at Covenant and how meaningful he thought that would be for me, so I’m really thankful for the ways that connections come full circle in the PCA and in Covenant Seminary.
SS: I suddenly had this amazing opportunity to love this young man who I had known since he was seven years old, and I knew because his dad had been my campus minister, and to help him discern a call to ministry and just play this wonderful, formative role for him, and that was such an act of God's grace in my life. I love Jeremy, and he gave me a gift I could never repay. The opportunity to care for his son and help him think about ministry and send him, with my blessing, into pastoral ministry through Covenant was really such a kind thing that the Lord did in my life, and I hope in Isaac's life too, but at least in mine.
IJ: I think for my dad, one of the coolest things when I decided to come to Covenant was being able to relate with him on the classes I was taking, not just in terms of theology or the content, but in terms of being like, “Hey dad, didn't you take Ethics with Doriani in 1993?” And he was like, “Yeah.” You know, and that's the class I'm taking with Doriani this semester, and we can compare notes in a different way in that regard, and the same is true of Greek exegesis with Bob Yarbrough. All my Greek classes have been with Dr. Yarbrough. So, a 30-year-plus difference, and to still have the same professors here pouring out knowledge and care for students is pretty special.
SS: I think some of the things that really stood out to me were things like doing Introduction to Greek and Hebrew, and just being in the trenches with guys, and just pouring over Greek vocabulary words—this really hard subject that almost no one had any background in. Covenant's vision of pastors being able to read the Bible and understand the Bible in its original language so that we can teach the Bible to people as well as we possibly can—we got that, and we got to do it together. It was really amazing. I think that was a beautiful part of the whole Covenant experience was the theology, the exegesis, the biblical languages, all of that was amazing.
You get to do that with other really smart people. I mean, people who are much smarter than me, and learn from them as they're learning it. That was an important part of the formation, but also just getting to sit and chat with professors and talk with them one-on-one and they show you something incredible from the book of Acts, or really help you make a connection to the gospel in your life where you weren't just learning how to be a pastor by studying the Bible, but you're learning how to be a pastor from these scholar-pastors who care deeply about Scripture, and were helping you to understand the Bible as they cared for you at the same time.
IJ: I keep running into people who are in ministry now who went to Covenant who have a pastoral heart and are careful in the way they approach hard issues. And they approach those issues with a care for the person they're talking to more than they care about trying to just hammer in the right answer into someone's skull. And that's the sort of thing you would point to in ministry and say, “You can't teach that, you have it or you don't.” I actually think it comes from sitting in class with professors who are the picture of integrity. The value of that is just exponentially larger for me.
SS: I'm shaped tremendously in the ministry now by what I learned at Covenant. A lot of my work as a leader is framing their stories in the story of the gospel, drawing out the hurts and the wounds and the hopes and the dreams of all these different families and all these different individuals and showing how the gospel is the answer to all those things. I learned that here at Covenant through the counseling degree, through biblical exegesis, through just being pastored really well by some of the faculty.
I don't think there's a day that goes by in my job when I'm not taking what I learned at Covenant and applying it to the real problems of a church, the real problems of the people of that church, and the world around that church as we look to engage it missionally for the Kingdom of God.
IJ: One of my Bible teachers in high school went here, and he described Covenant as Rivendell. He said, “When you come through the gates, it just feels like you're in a safe haven.” And as a high schooler, I probably thought that was kind of silly, but you do understand that's kind of true.
How do you learn about the gospel and actually still have it affect your heart? That's a really challenging question. If you're not cultivating that very carefully, you can easily go awry. And I think Covenant, at least in my experience, I don't see how you could do it much better than Covenant has.
