At Duke Divinity School, field education is more than a program requirement—it’s a defining part of the seminary experience for students like Dylan O’Shell, M.Div. ’27, who embrace the time for learning, curiosity, and even failure.
O’Shell is currently serving at Cross Assembly, a large Pentecostal congregation in Raleigh, N.C., where he’s discovering how to hold both conviction and openness in ministry.
“Cross was of interest to me because it was part of my denomination (Assemblies of God), but it was much larger than the previous church I worked at,” O’Shell said.
With over 3,000 worshippers each Sunday, the church’s scale and structure offered O’Shell something he hadn’t yet experienced in ministry. “It’s something I wanted to be involved with, to see how you administrate something that's so large and is such a fixture of a city.”
O’Shell entered the space with curiosity rather than assumptions. “Sometimes megachurches get a characterization of being a certain way. And I've found that you can find generous, beautiful people wherever you are,” he said.
“It’s easy to categorize people when you don't know them. But if you lean in and spend time with people in any environment, you're going to be able to see the best—if you're looking for it.”
Cross Assembly’s global vision particularly resonated with O’Shell.
“They’ve committed to sending 10 percent of their congregants into full-time international missions. I had originally planned to be a missionary, and though God redirected me into local ministry, my love for the unreached remains.”
That sense of global and theological expansiveness has been deepened through his time at Duke Divinity School.
For O’Shell, Duke’s ecumenical environment has played a key role in shaping that posture of openness. “I look around in my classroom as a Pentecostal, and I'm sharing space with Anglicans, non-denominational Christians, Baptists, Methodists, and many others,” he said.
"My time at Duke has given me a unified vision of the church. I don’t know any place quite like it that allows you to see the expanse of Christianity in one room and have conversations with people who just don’t believe what you do."
Instead of being wary of those differences, O'Shell tries to lean in and learn from those around him. "Being at Duke has helped me suspend many of my preconceptions about people from various theological backgrounds and really listen to them. Each extension of Christ’s family has strengths and weaknesses, and we develop by being in communion with one another.”
That leaning in has been possible, in part, because of the mentors O’Shell has encountered through field education. His supervisor, Chris Connell, and lay ministry mentors from business and consulting backgrounds have shaped his learning.
At Cross Assembly, Chris has modeled a grace-filled approach to growth. “My supervisor has been incredible simply because he’s given me permission to fail by being honest about his own failures and offering avenues to learn from failure,” O’Shell said. "I’m grateful for mentors who are honest about their own shortcomings, and the lessons they’ve learned along the way.
“Field education is like a laboratory. You’re supposed to have failed experiments—it’s how you learn."
Though O’Shell brought nearly a decade of pastoral experience with him to Duke, field education has taught him to remain a student. “You don’t know as much as you think you do,” he said. “Be open to what God might be doing in you… There’s more to learn.”
By placing students in ministry settings that reflect the diversity of the church and the world, field education invites them to test classroom theology in real-life contexts and grow under the mentorship of seasoned ministers.
For O'Shell, it's been in honor to learn in such a theologically diverse environment in the classroom and his church placement. He says, "I think Christians have spent a long time, especially in the United States, building their own little corners of God's kingdom, rather than coming together and asking how we can work as one."
That realization has reshaped how he understands God’s activity in the world: “I’ve stopped asking, ‘God, what do you want me to do?’ and started asking, ‘God, what are you doing where I am?’”
