Jewel Gingerich Longenecker, PhD
Director, Doctor of Ministry in Leadership
About Jewel
Jewel has been Director of the AMBS Doctor of Ministry in Leadership program since 2023, after serving as Co-Director (2022-2023). She came to AMBS in 2001 as Associate Dean for Leadership Education and was promoted to Dean of Lifelong Learning in 2014, serving through 2026. In these roles, she led the AMBS Church Leadership Center, which provides educational resources for ministry and leadership.
Prior to coming to AMBS, Jewel served as a campus pastor and conference youth minister in southeast Iowa and on the Theological Education Committee of the Mennonite churches of southeast Iowa. In her church and seminary roles, Jewel has listened attentively to the needs of the church for theological and leadership education at a variety of levels, and has helped AMBS respond to these needs with adaptive programming. Early in her AMBS tenure, she helped to design and launch !Explore: A Theological Program for High School Youth. Shortly after, she collaborated with Mennonite conference leaders to design and launch Journey: A Missional Leadership Development Program, an undergraduate-level program that prepares leaders called from within congregations. The program continues, now under AMBS ownership, as Journey: A Missional Leadership Development Program. From 2005-2011, Jewel directed Engaging Pastors: Jointly Tending to Excellence in Ministry, an initiative that fostered collaboration and sustained conversations among more than 450 pastors and AMBS professors, strengthening the ministries of each. The findings of the project are detailed in Engaging Pastors: Papers and reflections from the Summative Conference December 1-3, 2009 (Institute of Mennonite Studies, 2010), edited by Longenecker.
In 2013, together with the AMBS academic dean, Jewel developed and launched the AMBS Short Courses program, which annually serves lay and credentialed leaders, increasing theological understanding and leadership development in an Anabaptist perspective. For more than 20 years she led the planning and implementation of the annual AMBS Pastors and Leaders conference and coordinated a wide variety of continuing education programs, workshops, webinars, and seminars and led the design and development of the Transition to Leadership program and Ministry Integrity Circles, which provide support and guidance to cohorts of seminary graduates in their first pastorates and those facing pastoral ministry challenges of various kinds.
In 2014, Jewel completed a PhD in Leadership at Andrews University, a competency-based, job-embedded program designed for working professionals in leadership roles. Through the program, she studied leadership theory, engaged in leadership research, and demonstrated competence in twenty leadership areas. Her dissertation topic was “The Pastor as Vital Link: A study in how seminary-educated pastors engender engagement with scripture in select congregations,” which focused on the importance of deep, careful study of Scripture in congregations, led by well-prepared teacher-pastors.
Why I am at AMBS
My time as a student at AMBS was transformational, igniting a passion to connect others with seminary professors and resources. In my early thirties, with help from my spiritual director, I discerned a vocational calling toward working in spaces of overlap between the church and seminary. At first, I did this primarily through volunteering in my Iowa community, finding a variety of ways to bring seminary teachers, classes, and workshops to southeast Iowa. During that season, my pastor, Mag Richer Smith, noticed an opening for Associate Dean for Leadership Education at AMBS and encouraged me to apply. She told me she felt that God was nudging her to nudge me, which meant a lot to me. Looking at the job description, I saw a remarkable opportunity to serve at the intersection of church and academy. I felt drawn to this work, and the call back to AMBS remains a great joy and privilege.
I have stayed at AMBS because the work is deeply fulfilling. Whether serving pastors or lay leaders, through non-credit education or the doctoral program, I have witnessed the Holy Spirit continually at work in people’s lives, moving them to new places, deepening their understanding, and shaping and forming their character and skills in new and important ways. Helping people find meaning and vocation and deepen their calling and/or impact as ministry leaders is the best work imaginable!
What I Do at AMBS
I direct the Doctor of Ministry (DMin) in Leadership program and teach the first DMin cohort course, Leadership Foundations: Knowing, Being, and Doing. With its focus on leadership and a competency-based curriculum, the DMin program helps mature leaders to deepen and sustain their call, reflect theologically on leadership, increase their leadership competency, and serve more effectively in a rapidly changing church and world.
What Are Your Goals For Students?
I want to see students grow holistically, in both self-awareness and spiritual awareness, and to strengthen their leadership in an Anabaptist framework.
Publications
- Longenecker, Jewel Gingerich and Mary Forney. Crystals Encounter Christ. Scottdale, Pa.: Herald Press, 1997.
- Longenecker, Jewel Gingerich. “The path.” Journal of Applied Christian Leadership 2, no. 2 (2008): 3-4.
- Longenecker, Jewel Gingerich. “Resources on teaching the Bible in the congregation.” Vision: A Journal for Church & Theology 11, no. 2 (2010): 45-51.
- Longenecker, Jewel Gingerich, ed. Engaging pastors: Papers and reflections from the Summative Conference. Elkhart, IN: Institute of Mennonite Studies, 2010.
- Longenecker, Jewel Gingerich. “Bridging the Bible gap.” Sojourners, November 2011, 36-39, 46.
- Longenecker, Jewel Gingerich. “The pastor as vital link: A study in how seminary-educated pastors engender engagement with scripture in select congregations.” Doctoral dissertation, Andrews University, Berrien Springs, Michigan, 2014.
Awards
- Award for Excellence in Biblical Study–New Testament; AMBS Bible Department, 1992.
Memberships and Associations
- Association of Doctor of Ministry Education
- Board of the Association of Doctor of Ministry Education