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Charting the Future: Ryan Gregg

By Dr. Joseph Castleberry | Posted on Monday, May 22, 2023

I’ve had the privilege of leading Northwest University for 16 years, and I met and befriended Ryan Gregg during my first year in 2007. To this day, he remains one of the brightest students I’ve had the privilege of knowing, and I’ve been following his amazing journey with pride. Raised in the home of an Assemblies of God pastor, Ryan was an outstanding preacher as a student, who could powerfully relate the message of the biblical text to today’s world.

We almost lost him shortly after graduation when he suffered a broken neck in a car accident, and he endured a lot of pain as he worked through his recovery. That kind of experience deeply rattles a person, and Ryan had a lot to work through both physically and spiritually. For several years, he worked with an Israeli nonprofit organization that provided heart transplants to Palestinian children, and he learned to speak modern Hebrew along the way. He came back to America to pursue graduate and doctoral work, finishing a couple of years ago with a PhD in Old Testament and Theology from Harvard University. 

Not many students from any college go on to do such demanding doctoral work, and it was delightful to keep up the conversation with him as he worked his way through the literary corpus from pre-Socratic to postmodern thought. All along the way, he followed the pattern of truth.

Today, he serves as a teaching pastor at his father’s church in the San Francisco Bay Area. I’m guessing that it is the only megachurch in the world with a Harvard theology PhD regularly occupying the pulpit. If you have ever wondered whether deep biblical faith is compatible with the most rigorous possible theological training, watch this short video featuring Ryan Gregg. And rejoice in how God is using graduates of Northwest University to help lead His Kingdom into the future. Ryan offers just one example; we are proud of all our graduates! They represent a great future as God continues His work in the world. Thanks for everything you do to help us support them.