For the past six years, Mason Campbell and Noah McCallum have learned what it means to, as Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote, live “life together.”
The friends came to Samford University’s Beeson Divinity School together in the fall of 2023 after graduating from Ouachita Baptist University (OBU) in Arkadelphia, Arkansas, and have taken the same classes, gone through the hard days together, been in each other’s weddings and now, will graduate together May 1.
“To have a friend going through similar life situations, the same journey, made my experience at Beeson that much better,” Campbell said. “This friendship in particular has really sustained me throughout my time here and made it possible to get to this point.”
Campbell began at OBU in the fall of 2020, one year after McCallum started his undergraduate studies. Someone introduced them, and the rest is history, he said. During Campbell’s senior year, a mutual friend told both him and McCallum about Beeson after attending a Preview Day. When Campbell and McCallum moved to Birmingham later that year to begin their studies at Beeson, they took an introductory two-week course, “Foundations of Theological Education,” where they not only learned about Beeson’s approach to seminary, but also met their future wives. Mason met Hannah (Gibson), MATS ’25 and Noah met Faith (Gainey), who will come back to Beeson this fall to finish her MDiv.
“I see the big picture of it now,” Campbell said. “It’s encouraging as you go into the next season to see God’s hand in all of that, leading us here, living together.”
McCallum recalled the pair challenging each other and encouraging one another as they pursued marriage and ministry, helping each other work through questions and issues that have come up over the past several years.
“Mason has been somebody I talk to a lot about these things,” McCallum said. “God knows me. It would have been a lot harder to persevere at a place like Beeson, which is hard, and for both of us being hours away from family, had I not had somebody I knew pre-Beeson and someone who was a good friend to walk through it together.”
Campbell recalled their first Reformation Heritage Lectures series in 2023, when noted author and scholar Carl Trueman came to campus. There, he remembered hearing that seminary “is not just the classes you take; it’s the person sitting next to you.” That was reinforced while reading Bonhoeffer’s Life Together in spiritual formation, a tradition at Beeson.
“It really does add so much to the experience. It really does make that difference that I’m sitting with these other men and women who are preparing for ministry,” Campbell said.
At the spring 2026 awards ceremony, Campbell received an award for excellence in history and doctrine.
“Mason is not the first person to speak, but when he does speak, his comments are always measured, insightful and generous,” said professor Piotr Malysz. “He sees learning as a way to enlarge his pastoral heart, to bring people into God’s great story and to sustain them within it.”
McCallum said while he grew up Baptist and now serves in a Baptist church, Beeson has helped him become “more informed and less dogmatic in all the best ways.”
“The catholicity of the church has been so awakened in my mind, so that, going from here, as I serve in a Baptist church, I have a better understanding that we have the same mission and are worshiping the same God,” McCallum said.
McCallum will finish his internship at The Station Church in Hoover after graduation and will continue to pursue pastoral ministry in the local church.
Campbell is an associate minister at Elevate Community Church in Homewood and plans to continue to pastor and pursue pastoral ministry, with hopes of eventually becoming a senior pastor.
“I love the work of shepherding people and preaching and teaching the Word of God,” he said. “My goal is to continue to grow in that and pastor God’s people whenever He sees fit, and until then, to walk faithfully and serve the church the best I can with what the Lord has equipped me with.”