Training the Kennedy Men
How a Father and Son Came to The Master’s Seminary at the Same Time
Wiley and Wyatt Kennedy didn’t make a big deal about the class. It was a week-long intensive on preaching. They didn’t make a formal decision to sit next to each other. It happened naturally because the two enjoy each other’s company. And they thought the professor knew they were father and son, both pursuing a Master of Divinity degree at The Master’s Seminary. He didn’t.
“At first, he thought I was just tagging along with Wyatt for the day,” Wiley said. “I think he was a little surprised when he realized that I was also a student in the class.”
“It was a lot of fun,” Wyatt said. “In that class and in others, a lot of people ask us if we ever compete over grades, especially when we were taking the same Hebrew class at the same time last semester. But it’s not really a fair fight. Since I’m younger, I seem to pick up the languages a little quicker, but because of his age and decades of ministry experience, he’s miles ahead of me when it comes to classes on pastoral ministry, preaching, or counseling. It’s cool to see how each of us has certain strengths.”
They may not have the same strengths when it comes to the classroom, but they have the same perspective on how they ended up in seminary at the same time: It’s something they couldn’t have imagined not that long ago.
“When Wyatt was growing up, I wasn’t in full-time, vocational ministry,” Wiley said. “I worked in the business world.”
Wiley had considered ministry when he was a student at The Master’s University in the 1980s, but while there, he learned that Christians in the marketplace have a profound calling to be a witness for Christ. So, he went to work for a manufacturing company, intending to use his time and resources to influence others for the sake of the gospel. He would do that for more than two decades, until the financial recession of 2008. At that time, the company where he worked was forced to lay off several employees, including Wiley. Yet, the Lord in His remarkable providence used that time of uncertainty to push Wiley toward the full-time ministry he’d seriously considered in college.
“When the recession of 2008 hit, I was an elder at Grace Baptist Church in Santa Clarita,” Wiley said. “Our pastor, David Hegg, asked me if I’d consider joining the pastoral staff.”
At the time, Wiley knew he needed seminary and he considered coming to TMS, but his children, including Wyatt, were young and it didn’t seem like the right time for his family. Fast-forward a little more than a decade and the Lord had brought Wiley to the pastoral team at Santa Clarita Baptist. He’d also led him through a season of extraordinary ministry in Haiti, where he worked to connect churches in America with churches in the capital, Port-au-Prince. And, his kids were starting to leave the house.
“It finally seemed like the right time,” Wiley said.
So, the father committed to seminary before the son. But the Lord would use a family tragedy to bring Wyatt to the point where he knew he needed to join his dad at TMS and train for the ministry.
“My path to TMS really begins in the fall of 2023,” Wyatt said. “It was my senior year of college at TMU, and I was sitting in a Greg Gifford class when my dad calls.”
Since he was in class, Wyatt didn’t pick up the phone the first time. But when his dad immediately called a second time, Wyatt knew something was wrong. He stepped out of class and called his dad, who told him there’d been a medical emergency with his 18-month-old nephew. Wyatt immediately jumped in his car and raced toward Carpinteria, where the rest of his family was staying for a few days.
“As I’m driving there, I learn that my nephew isn’t going to make it,” Wyatt said. “When I get there, I see the pain in my family. I’m wanting to be there for my parents and my sister and brother-in-law, and I’m thinking that I want to spend my life caring for souls in the most difficult of times and dedicating my time to what truly matters.”
In the coming months, it would become clear to Wyatt that the Lord was calling him to pastoral ministry. Once he knew that, the next step was easy: apply to The Master’s Seminary and join his father at the school.
“I just want to serve,” Wyatt said. “I’ve watched my dad. I want to do the same thing he does and continue to serve and be faithful right here, and then see what the Lord does with that.”
Wiley and Wyatt know this season will be brief. In a few more semesters, Wiley will, Lord willing, graduate. A year or so later, Wyatt will join him in the ranks of Master’s men. But thanks to this time together at TMS, they and their future ministries will always have the same grounding.
“This is a place where pastors train pastors,” Wiley said. “I think of Dr. Murphy, who pastors a church as he teaches at the seminary. He brings the approach of a pastor to every lecture and assignment.”
“If you want to pastor souls and preach, like I do, there’s no other place to go,” Wyatt said. “This is on a church campus. I’m getting invaluable experience in the church as I learn in the classroom.”
Wiley is particularly grateful his son is at TMS because he’s seen its faithfulness since it opened its doors in 1986. At the time, many of his friends from TMU were going to seminary. Wiley had considered joining them. Though he’s a few years behind many of his classmates, he knows he is getting the same training they received.
“The school hasn’t changed. Wyatt and I are getting the same education today I would have received if I came here right after college,” Wiley said. “And I’m confident the same will be true in the coming years.”
