MariaIsabelle Garcia and a Ministry Beyond the Walls
MariaIsabelle Garcia has spent years working in churches and nonprofits, and she reached a point where volunteering and part-time roles were no longer enough. She wanted to be fully in the work. This fall she returns to the University of Chicago as a third-year Master of Divinity student, with ordination in view for the summer of 2027.
She describes her call as deep and innate, and she credits the Disciples leaders who saw it in her and nurtured it. Their mentorship pointed her toward Chicago, and she has been sure of it since. Every day she gets to sit in serious conversation about the future of the church and the denomination, she says, she knows she is where she belongs.
What she is working out now is how faith holds up under pressure. She is exploring, as she puts it, “how we can open and complicate our theological beliefs to sustain us” and equip spiritual leaders for the times we live in. She names those times plainly: “from longtime wars to national issues like ICE raids and the danger of holding marginalized identities.” In her reading, the moment is calling spiritual leaders to “take on (or reclaim, depending on who you ask) a different role in our local communities that goes beyond the four walls of our churches.”
She is working this out on the ground. She recently wrapped a year-long internship at University Church in Hyde Park, and she will keep working alongside that community through her ordination process — a congregation, she says, that both supports her and challenges her, and helps her ask the hard questions.
This year, Garcia received a Ministerial Scholarship from Disciples Home Missions, which supports students preparing for ministry across the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ).