From an early age, Samuel Hagos knew he was called to pastoral ministry.
Growing up in the Dallas area, he felt the call to preach by the time he was a high school student.
“I was a shy, awkward kid, but I’ve seen God grow and mature me into who He was calling me to be,” Hagos said.
Hagos graduated with a bachelor’s in biblical studies from Criswell College in Dallas and applied to only one seminary to continue his training: Samford University’s Beeson Divinity School.
“The only thing I knew about Beeson was Robert Smith Jr.,” Hagos said. “I knew I wanted to be somewhere I’d be shaped for ministry, formed and shaped by professors who believe in what they taught.”
Hagos had never been to Birmingham, but in 2019, he packed his bags and moved to start his studies at Beeson.
During his first convocation in the fall of 2019, Hagos was challenged by Dean Douglas Sweeney “not to be masters of divinity, but to be mastered by the divine.”
“I knew it was a privilege to stop life for 3 1/2 years and focus on my studies,” Hagos said. “I knew one day God would put me before people and I would have to have something to say. I felt like my calling and my time at Beeson was a stewardship—not for me to find myself, but to be equipped with tools and resources to give to the church, to those God entrusted to my care.”
Beeson gave Hagos lifelong friends and mentors like Sweeney and Smith, and was a place where God used “so many people to pour into me and pull out of me what God has put in me,” Hagos said.
Just before graduating with his Master of Divinity in 2022, Hagos completed an internship at Progressive Baptist Church in Chicago, led by well-known pastor Charlie Dates.
“I knew I wanted to serve in the Black church tradition,” Hagos said. “I believe the Black church is the hope for America. God has always used the Black church in America’s history to show a different way, what it means to trust God when you don’t have political power, what it means to hope in God when everything around you is hopeless. This is what God has called me to give my life to. The cross before me, the road behind me. No turning back.”
God opened a door for Hagos to return to the church as a staff member following his graduation, and Hagos now serves as the church’s experience pastor, overseeing new member care, along with preaching, teaching and other pastoral duties.
“It has been some of the most life-giving years of my life,” Hagos said. “It’s reminded me that my studies were not in vain. Those unseen seasons of faithfulness produce fruit that I’m living now.”
Hagos credits his time at Beeson for helping him to serve God’s people well in Chicago. A recipient of the James Earl Massey Student Preaching Award at Beeson, Hagos learned from Massey’s memoir to “be a good steward of the life” God entrusted to him.
“Stewarding His people is my main responsibility,” Hagos said.
Believing that God has called him to one day become a senior pastor, Hagos has seen the Lord sharpen the tools in his pastoral tool belt during his ministry at Progressive. Wherever the Lord leads him next, he knows he’ll never leave the service of God’s church.
“It’s the only ship God has sent to save the world. This is what I’ve given my life to. I don’t have a backup plan,” Hagos said. “I believe Jesus is who He says He is. No matter how dark things are, there is hope and there has to be hope. I want to walk life’s journey with ordinary people whom God has called to Himself.”