As a professor, Allen passes along godly example of discipleship she received as a student

When asked who positively influenced Ashley Allen, assistant professor of women’s ministries at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, her answer is almost a “Who’s Who” of Southern Baptist women, many of whom are closely connected to the institution. Today, she is influencing the next generation of women’s ministry leaders studying on Seminary Hill.

“There were women who have faithfully invested, mentored, and discipled me which has been foundational for my calling in women’s ministry,” Allen said. So much so, the “genesis” of her doctoral dissertation on discipleship was based on the influences women have made on her, she said. 

“Some of those women have portraits hanging in their memory around this campus. Women who loved the Lord and wanted to pass that down. That has been such an important thing in my life,” Allen said. 

Allen cited the late Mary Louise McDonald, for whom “the library in the Women’s Center is named in her honor,” she said; adding the late Wana Ann and Giles Fort, pioneer Southern Baptist medical missionaries honored in “the missions classroom in Mathena Hall,” and the late Joyce Mott, the primary pianist for 45 years at Hyde Park Baptist Church in Austin, Texas, and for whom “a room in the Riley Center is in her honor.”

She also named women like former missionary Bobbye Rankin (wife of former International Mission Board President Jerry Rankin) and former IMB trustee member Pam Blume (and wife of K. Allan Blume, former president-editor of North Carolina’s Biblical Recorder) who also helped set Allen on the trajectory of mentoring younger women, she said. 

“These are ladies that I’ve been with in their homes and with their spouses. And the ones who are with the Lord, I think about the investment they’ve made with me, the things they’ve taught me about prayer, interacting with people, studying Scripture,” Allen said.  

After earning her journalism degree at the University of Texas in 2000, Allen worked at the newspaper in Corpus Christi, Texas. Feeling the call to ministry, she received a scholarship from her college church, Hyde Park Baptist Church in Austin, Texas, to Southwestern Seminary, where she would earn her Master of Arts in Christian Education in 2003. 

God’s calling for Allen was fine-tuned at seminary through several people, including the late Bob Mathis, an administration professor, who challenged her to consider Ph.D. studies. Because Allen had “no math or science background,” she said, both Mathis and then Terry School Dean Robert Welch tutored Allen every Friday afternoon to help her pass a pre-requisite graduate level statistical engineering class to meet the requirements for the Ph.D. program in the Terry School at the time. “I am deeply thankful for that. They were two of several professors on this campus who modeled for me what it means to invest in students, and it is what I desire for my students,” Allen said. 

Another influence for Allen at the seminary has been Terri Stovall, dean of women and professor of women’s ministries, for whom she served as her teaching assistant. Stovall served as Allen’s chair on her dissertation committee for her Ph.D. work and said that mentoring is a theme in Allen’s life. “I see her wearing many hats, but she still leads a Friday morning Bible study for women. She doesn’t have to do that, but it is a part of who she is,” Stovall said.

Women’s ministry doesn’t always “fit into those neat, positional boxes,” Stovall said. “Women’s ministry looks different from one generation to the next. Women’s ministry will ebb and flow, even depending on where they are in life,” such as in child-rearing years or in taking care of aging parents, she said. As a result, women need the mentorship of other women. “And that’s what Ashley has been. She intentionally stays in the Word, intentionally placing herself under women who could speak into her life and then in turn, as she has matured, she is modeling that back. It’s like Paul said, ‘We imitate Him, now you imitate us.’ She’s the epitome of that.”

Stovall especially thinks it is “fantastic” for Allen to be leading women in missions, such as the New York mission trip she will lead during spring break, March 12-18, 2023. “It flows out of her heart for missions and women’s ministry. It’s women taking women to go and do. I love it.”

After earning her doctorate in 2009, Allen served as the first women’s ministry consultant for the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina. In the role, Allen “was tasked with helping churches begin a women’s ministry that included evangelism, discipleship, and missions,” Allen said, establishing the convention’s women’s ministry state-wide, and helping church leaders build “a women’s ministry so women could be equipped to be disciple-makers.”

In 2021, Allen returned to Southwestern, this time as faculty and to fulfill what was birthed in her while in seminary. “When I was a student here, Dr. Fish would disciple five men every semester, and I always thought, ‘I wish someone would do that for the women,’” Allen said referring to Roy J. Fish, whom she had for evangelism. She now meets weekly with a small group of ladies to pray and “study Scripture together,” she said.

Allen recognizes that life does not always fit into regular office hours. “For me, that has meant some early morning praying times with some of the students, a lot of lunches, a lot of coffee, and a lot of tea,” she explained. 

By getting to know her students, she often connects their gifts and talents to ministries. For example, she successfully connected a student to write for Journey, a ladies’ devotional magazine with Lifeway, where Allen serves as theological appraiser. 

Allen said the “younger generation values transparency” and described discipleship as “life on life with transparency. It’s having an older lady who is one step ahead of a younger lady, studying Scripture with her, praying with her, and then showing her that this is how this is lived.” 

Encouraging discipleship to be “Christ-centered and not self-focused” is a challenge for students “because their time is limited,” she said. As an example of “being others-focused rather than self-focused,” Allen said half of her weekly Bible study group went on a mission trip to South Asia during the fall break, knowing that they would come back “absolutely exhausted” but with truly meaningful experiences.  

Allen hopes her students remember her as “a professor who cared and who didn’t just say in the classroom or say in a Bible study that we need to reflect the love of Christ. I hope my students would see that in me. I want to be someone who obeyed the Lord.” 

Joy Kim*, a Texas Baptist College humanities major from East Asia hasn’t had Allen as a professor “yet,” she said, but is a part of Allen’s Bible study. “Friday is my favorite time of the whole week,” Kim said of the meeting. “She always encourages us to fix our eyes on Jesus, especially in difficult situations, to hold on to God fast instead of paying too much attention to our difficult circumstances. She would pray for each of our needs and make a serious effort to remember the names of certain family members,” Kim added.

Another student, Nancy Sánchez*, a Master of Arts in Biblical Counseling student from South America, said she got to know Allen at Global Missions Week last March. “Prior to that, I always heard great things of Dr. Allen from friends of mine who took her classes and are part of her weekly Bible study,” she said. Describing Allen as “caring, listens well, prays constantly, loves the Lord, and has a servant’s heart,” Sánchez said that having women like her has been “a huge blessing for me. Basically, when I grow up in faith, I want to be like her.” 

Allen said her ministry to make disciples of students is not unique to her at Southwestern Seminary and Texas Baptist College. “I love our faculty,” Allen said. “There are professors who have students into their homes for meals, who invest in students and make themselves available to encourage their students. We are here for the students, investing in them; that is our calling.” 

*Names changed for security reasons.