Active missionary and Paraclete associate Jay Breish recently earned his doctorate degree. I recently asked him to tell us about the challenging experience.
Jay, you’re an experienced missionary who has spent years focused on a crucial ministry. Somewhere in there you felt the need to devote a large chunk of your and your family’s time and money to earning a doctorate degree. That seems like a huge step. But before I ask you the obvious question of why, I’d first like to hear more about your ministry background.
Ministry has been my focus and interest of mine since before high school. I preached my first sermon when I was 15 years old. I started a Bible study at my public high school in 9th grade, and surprisingly, we had kids coming out on Monday mornings at 7:00 AM to hear me read from the Bible! Ministry has always been a focus of mine. Since about 7th grade, when I felt the Lord calling me, I’ve had a focus on God’s Kingdom work.
I worked at Christian camps over many summers in high school and college. I became a youth pastor immediately after college and found that you get about three hours a week with a kid as a youth minister. As a camp counselor, however, you could spend up to 40 hours with a kid. But with residential ministry, I could have two years of life with someone. That communal part of ministry was appealing to Hannah and me. We found that discipleship communities appealed to us, particularly for ministering to people from challenging places.
I began as a full-time missionary in 2009. We were commissioned and sent to our first assignment: a Christ-centered residential home for troubled teens. I served in many different roles over the ten years we were there: house parent, the boy’s counselor, and the Program Director. We also hosted parent seminars and trainings. I became the Executive Director after a few years and ran the daily operations for seven years. After that, I was a biblical counselor before joining Paraclete.
When you consider our years as missionaries, a few common themes appear. Firstly, we’re frequently found working with people with deep brokenness and trauma. Secondly, we’ve often focused on discipleship more than just evangelism. Evangelism is helping lead someone to the Lord, but discipleship is walking alongside them in an intimate relationship. Hannah and I prefer longer-term relationships. We started our official missionary work in a 24/7 residential setting.
Wow, you two have been busy indeed. So, tell me a few facts about your doctorate. What is your degree in and where did you earn it?
My doctorate in Social Leadership is through Omega Graduate School (OGS). They’ve been around for decades, but my degree is new. In fact, I don’t believe any other schools currently offer this degree. It’s a new program. They always focused on integrating a Biblical worldview with the social sciences, but they primarily offered a PhD in philosophy. My degree had an Action Research focus rather than the more traditional PhD.
How long did it take to earn it?
Technically, the doctorate itself was about four years, but my research began when I started my Masters. Counting both degrees took me twelve years to finish, with a few breaks in the middle.
So now we come to the big question. You already had a vibrant, successful ministry. You were the father of a beautiful, growing family. Earning a doctorate is no small undertaking. It demands hours of work and huge financial sacrifices. What motivated you to commit yourself to earning a doctorate degree?
At first, I didn’t want to do it, at least not in this season in my life. The Lord had to stir up this idea in me through other people saying, “Jay, I think it’s time you go back and do some more research on this.”
When I began my graduate work, OGS required that you pass five PhD level classes before joining their master’s program. It was a “sink or swim” situation. The workload and the title weren’t all that appealing to me. But I watched other classmates in their 50s, 60s, and 70s getting their doctorates. They were people from all over the world, successful in their ministries and businesses. They were there for a reason, which brought a lot of maturity and expertise to the table. I loved that. It was one of the reasons I went to that school.
OGS allows students to contextualize their research to their field or ministry, which is another reason I was drawn to them. I didn’t want to sit in a class and just learn facts and then regurgitate them. I wanted to take what I was learning and immediately apply it to life and ministry. I love how Action Research allowed me to be in a community with people who all wanted to solve a problem together. It allowed me to tweak the dials, if you will, midstream. That was really appealing to me. I wanted to be in the work rather than simply observing through a glass window. Qualitative and quantitative data have value for sure, but I’m a much more hands-on guy, and I didn’t want to wait years to develop a theory only to go back to apply that theory to find out what works or doesn’t work.
How did you manage the workload?
It was a huge leap of faith for us to step into this. I have a young family, and my finances were tight. Stateside missionaries predominantly ministering to the American Church are not frequently thought of when raising funds! I prayed, “Lord, you’re going to have to provide the time and the finances for this.” God ended up providing in a lot of miraculous ways!
I asked my organization if my research could be part of my ministry job description, and they said yes. So I didn’t have to work a 60-hour workweek. I was able to balance time a little bit better. I took about a day to two days to do doctoral work throughout the week, and then I took about four days to do my counseling and teaching ministry. That saved me a little time to spend time with my family.
How will you apply your degree work to your current ministry?
Action Research allowed me to accelerate the application process. I received my doctorate in Social Leadership. My focus was on creating communities that heal. Considering I work with a lot of people with trauma, it seemed logical to ask, “How can we create environments where people can grow and heal together?”
When I got to the last year of my degree work and I needed to write my dissertation, I realized that [some pieces of my ministry] were coming together—the communal piece, the discipleship piece, and the tools I [used] teaching identity in Christ, and the new sainthood of a believer.
I loved watching how communal discipleship, coupled with training on our identity in Christ, transformed people. Students began to realize that their desire is to be obedient to God and walk by the Spirit. We’re talking about Galatians chapter 5 practically played out. I realized that the question I had asked back in 2009 when I was working with kids and families was, “How do I create other ministries that don’t require a 501C3 and $1,000,000 budget every year to help heal kids and their families?” How do you do this within the Church?”
I realized the Church was the answer. The Church is God’s solution to society’s ills. Part of my research was on emotionally healthy and spiritually healthy churches. The fact is that since the Enlightenment, the American Church, in general, has not been all that healthy. We relegated much of our authority in terms of heart care and mind care to secular science. So, Omega Graduate School is a great fit because we believe in social science. We believe in quantitative and qualitative data. We think there’s value to that. However, the greatest value will come from a Biblical mindset of social research.
My dissertation and research work became a 12-week discipleship program called “Communities That Heal.” (CTH) It’s about how we invigorate and revitalize the Church. We want to take a bunch of individuals who, from the beginning, said “I’m broken, and I need help.” We didn’t only want a healthy small group; we wanted to be a group that took what we learned and applied it to every sphere of society.
So CTH was designed to grow individuals into a healthy community of individuals and equip them with tools where they can be societal change agents, where they actually go and make disciples. They have the tools, and they have personal testimonies to help others. If we can deal with the mental health issues within the Church, then the Church can become the solution that God’s always meant her to be.
When did you come into Paraclete?
I started the process in 2020 and officially became a member in 2021. I’ve known Glen (Paraclete CEO) for over a decade but didn’t think long and hard enough about joining Paraclete when I switched mission umbrellas. Later, I realized this other organization was not a good fit and came to Paraclete, which was a perfect fit. It’s an honor for me to come alongside other ministries, churches, and individuals without promoting my own thing.
Jay, we’re coming up to the end of our time. Is there anything else you’d like to add?
Education is a great thing! And if people are feeling stirred by the Lord to learn and grow more, I think as long as it stays practical, it’s worthwhile. It’s helpful if you know the general direction the Lord’s calling [you]. For me, I had those key passions, those key areas that were important to me. What I needed was mentors to help me see the forest through the trees, so to speak. Everything was right there. All the building blocks were right there. But it was through one of my professors who helped me see the connections.
He said, “Jay, you’ve been asking this question for a long time. Doctoral research is the solution to your question. You have to go find the answer to how you create communities that heal.”
Also, if someone’s thinking about a doctorate, you’ve got to count the cost and be obedient to the Lord. He made a way for me, a guy who couldn’t afford it. He paid for it, which is amazing.
The other thing is understanding the difference between the professional doctorate and practical doctoral degrees. The doctorate of education, or in my case, the doctorate of social leadership are practical degrees. They’re great for those of us who want to be hands-on in the trenches and are already doing the work, but we want to get better at it. That’s different than the academic degrees, which are designed for those who will be teachers and professors. They’re much more about developing theories that are applicable in a broader sense.
My degree is very specific, but if I took that and put it through a PhD model, then I could potentially come out with something that various fields could use because it would be more theoretical, less specific, less practical, but more applicable on a broader scale. Knowing the differences between types of doctorates can be helpful.