Photo by: Corey Nolan
At Emmanuel College, Students Are Having Encounters With God As a member of Emmanuel’s faculty I am seeing students become mature disciples. By Trés Ward
TRÉS WARD is the Assistant to the President, Director of Worship and Arts Ministries, and an adjunct faculty member at the IPHC’s Emmanuel College. He also directs the school’s worship ministry teams including the Emmanuel Singers, The Voices of Emmanuel, Conquest and chapel worship. Trés is a fourth-generation minister in the IPHC. He is a worship consultant with IPHC Discipleship Ministries and is the IPHC Representative to the NextGen Cohort of the Pentecostal and Charismatic Churches of North America (PCCNA). He has served on staff with three IPHC congregations and had led overseas missions teams. Trés holds an M.Div. from Liberty University (2020) and a Bachelor of Music Education degree from Appalachian State University (2013). He and his wife, Rachael, live in Lavonia, Georgia. Encourage Magazine 12
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e live in an age when all the information in the world is readily available at our fingertips. If we have a question, we no longer need a dictionary or an encyclopedia, a teacher or a parent; a quick online search will uncover an article or a blog to tell us everything we may want to know. Of course, if one wants to go a step further, then a YouTube search will turn up hours of videos that you can watch rather than reading an article. This is the way we access information in 2020. So when it comes to getting a traditional college education, there must be something that goes beyond merely acquiring knowledge. There must be something meaningful enough to inspire a teenager to leave the security of home and to spend several more years in school. In my view, Emmanuel College offers such a place! I say it so often that my students often joke about it, but I believe it’s true: “When you come to Emmanuel College, you get more than just an education—you get an experience.” I say this as someone who was an IPHC student and then attended a state university for my undergraduate education.
