Among the more than 1,400 living Beeson alumni, many serve in the cross-cultural mission field, working daily to advance the Gospel and build the Kingdom of God. Five Beeson alumni spoke about their experience in cross-cultural ministry for this year's magazine.
Yannick Christos-Wahab | MDiv ’18
Yannick Christos-Wahab was born and raised in London by Nigerian parents. While studying theology at the University of St. Andrews, Christos-Wahab developed a deeper understanding of the Bible and was encouraged by professors to pursue further study. Of the few U.S. seminaries his professors mentioned to him, Beeson was the only one he didn’t know anything about, he said. The idea of studying theology in the context of church history and of learning the biblical languages intrigued him. “I had never been to the South,” Christos-Wahab said. “It was incredible. People were really kind; it was a wonderful community.”
Returning to London after graduation, Christos-Wahab joined a church plant that included many second-generation African people. About a year and a half later, the church merged with nearby Stockwell Baptist Church, which had not had a pastor for three years. “It was so close to us. We had a leadership team; they had a building. It just became clear that we could do more for the Gospel together,” he said.
This year, Stockwell turned 160 years old, celebrating a history that started when Charles Spurgeon preached the first sermon in the church in 1866.
“We’ve seen a lot of people come to faith, a lot of baptisms,” Christos-Wahab said. “We’ve been able to train people for ministry and train elders. We’d love to help be a part of the revitalization of churches in London who would otherwise die.”
Christos-Wahab credited his training at Beeson to giving him a philosophy of ministry that is deeply theological and not pragmatic. “Ministry involves suffering, and God uses suffering to grow us,” Christos-Wahab said. “Local church ministry has a way of keeping you grounded. Things go wrong. You try your best, and things don’t work out. It’s a reminder that, ultimately, things are in God’s hands, not yours.”
Christos-Wahab encouraged current Beeson students to “get the fundamentals right.”
"You have to have a deep grounding in Scripture,” he said. “Some people will say you need less Bible, but you need more Bible to have more grounding in your ministry and to remain faithful.”
Connor and Misty Hopkins | MDiv ’21
From the time he was a teenager, Connor Hopkins wanted to be a missionary. “I had a really good youth pastor who was faithful to teach me about the Scriptures,” he said. “He was adamant about teaching a global Gospel, a Gospel not just for our town of 15,000, but for the 8 billion people of the world. Jesus didn’t just rise from the grave for my city, but so the entire world might know Him.”
When she was 12 years old, Misty Hopkins became a Christian at a conference that emphasized missions and the work of God “in the hardest, darkest places.” As such, the call to become a Christian and to give her life to missions was a simultaneous call.
Both Connor and Misty began working toward an MDiv with a missions certificate at Beeson in the fall of 2017. While they weren’t dating at that time, their relationship developed during their first semester at Beeson after knowing each other as friends for about a year and a half through their membership at Birmingham's Iron City Church. After getting married during spring break of their first year, they began to discern where the Lord was leading them, and a vision the Lord had planted in Connor's mind a few years before became clearer.
When he was 20, Connor served as a counselor at a Christian summer camp for youth when he felt God calling him to go to Japan for His name’s sake. “I knew it was the Lord,” Connor said. “It was not my idea. Nothing in my humanity thought Japan would be a cool place to go for missions.”
The desire to serve the Lord in Asia had been planted in Misty’s mind as well. Years before meeting Connor, she had sensed the Lord calling her to the continent as a Christian worker.
Years later, God consistently brought Japan to the forefront of their minds and the Hopkins moved to the country in January 2025.
The first “sphere” of the Hopkins’ work includes evangelism, exploratory Bible studies, discipleship and life-on-life community with others. They also work alongside a Japanese church in their second "sphere" of work, strengthening it and mobilizing its members for ministry. “We want to stay humble and not assume we have all the answers," Misty said. "We want to seek out what God is already doing there. We want to find the Christians who are already here and learn how we can work with them, instead of doing our own thing and pioneering entirely."
In their third "sphere" of work, the Hopkins assist with the training of local pastors, offering cohorts, fellowship and more.
Connor said one of the lessons they had to learn was just how foreign Christianity is to Japanese people. “Because Christianity is such a foreign religion, it feels very difficult for them to enter into a church space. For them to enter into that space at all is a huge step, culturally,” Connor said.
To counter that, the Hopkins lead a young adult service at the church, offering a Bible study instead of a more formal sermon, along with a time of worship and prayer for one another.
Misty said the couple has seen the Lord do great things in the past year. Several people have heard the Gospel for the first time. Others have become Christians, and others have found a church home.
“We’re just meeting people in different stages in their walk with the Lord and getting to come alongside them,” Misty said.
MV | MDiv ’13
(Editor’s Note: To protect the security of this Beeson graduate, we are not using her name or detailing specific location information.)
As a child who had come to faith at a young age, MV remembers hearing about missionary kids and wanting to be one of them. “When I was 16 years old, I felt the Lord calling me to serve Him overseas,” she said. “After that, I continued the trajectory of staying steadfastly on that path, not knowing exactly what that would look like.”
Knowing seminary was the next step, MV took a step of faith and came to Beeson. While she initially applied to the MATS program, because her post-graduation plans were more vocational, the admission team encouraged her to apply for the MDiv. “I’m so grateful they did,” she said. “It opened more doors for me than I would have imagined. I was able to take classes that really grew my love for God’s Word all the more.”
For the past seven years, MV has served as a missionary in the Middle East and currently works at an online seminary. “My Arabic pastor at my church knew I was looking for opportunities to get more involved and asked if I wanted to be involved in the seminary," she said.
At the seminary, MV uses her administration skills and helps female students as they pursue their calling. "It's all in Arabic and all online, but we really do try to keep the incarnational aspect present as much as possible," she said. "But in the Middle East, especially since the seminary is for those who come from Muslim or small minority backgrounds, they're not able to openly go to seminary and may not have the funds."
In addition to serving at the seminary, MV builds relationships with nonbelievers and is the team leader for a multicultural team that shares the Gospel with those within the country she serves.
Throughout her time in the Middle East, MV said she has seen God’s faithfulness in leading her to do what she’s doing. “If you told me seven years ago that I’d be helping with a seminary, I would have been shocked,” she said. “I’ve seen God’s hand continually guiding me.”
Chris Yancey | MDiv ’13
When he went to Ecuador to serve as a Christian camp counselor for a summer during college, Chris Yancey assumed it would only be for one summer. The Lord apparently had other plans.
After that summer, Yancey began praying about what he felt was a call to the mission field. He spoke with the missionary in Ecuador with whom he served. He recommended that Yancey pursue seminary. As a student at Beeson, Yancey returned to Ecuador each summer—except for the summer he spent in Spain learning Spanish. He did his cross-cultural ministry practicum in Ecuador as well. In 2019, Yancey and his wife, Madeline ’13, moved to Ecuador, where they serve with the PESCA Foundation, which stands for Project of Evangelism and Social Work Covering the Amazon Region.
The group has two camp facilities: one in the mountains where the Yanceys live, in Patate, and one in the jungle, in the city of Tena. In addition to the camps they run, the facilities also serve as hubs for church planting, pastor training and church work with Baptist churches in the area. The foundation does evangelistic work, church planting, reaches out to children in the surrounding area, performs acts of service in the community and provides theological education. "We identify areas in need of local churches and try to plant them there through different efforts as God opens doors," he said. "Our heart is the local church and church planting and equipping churches to reach their community and serve their community better."
Yancey credits his time at Beeson for helping him learn to prepare sermons and build relationships with professors and his fellow students. “It was really good to build those relationships with students and have access to professors like we had,” he said. “The academic rigor prepared me to prepare sermons, which is a lot of what I do.”
Yancey said their current work involves motivating local believers to take ownership of their churches. The growth they’ve seen is encouraging, and in his church, they are baptizing at least five to six people a year.
He encouraged current Beeson students to get exposure to different contexts in the world of missions. “Get a good feel for where you’d like to serve or where you feel God calling you to serve in the future,” Yancey said. “Take short-term trips, summer trips, etc. Serve faithfully in your local church right now. Even if it’s not in an international context, that will prepare you. There are a lot of principles that cross over."