Ashley Chesnut’s plans for life after graduating with a Master of Divinity from ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø’s Beeson Divinity School in 2011 had fallen through.
It turns out that was just the place God wanted her.
Chesnut, at the time, had begun leading a small group of female ºÚÁϳԹÏÍøstudents, and felt the Lord calling her to stay in Birmingham until they graduated. She had planned on serving in the area of biblical studies and had begun working as a ministry assistant at The Church at Brook Hills, where she had interned in college.
While it wasn’t necessarily the position she envisioned, it allowed her more time to grow closer to those students.
In October 2012, during a small group session with the girls, many of them began confessing a variety of sins, including sexual sin.
“It was evident God had kept me here to build that relationship with them, so they would feel comfortable enough to share things they’d never shared with anyone else,” Chesnut said. “God used that to change my direction in ministry.”
That same fall, five young women from church asked to meet with her to share their own struggles with sexual sin or sexual trauma. The experience led Chesnut to go back to school and earn a Certificate of Biblical Counseling from Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, aiming to better serve those God had led to her.
“I knew how to give people right theology, but if you don’t know how to give people right theology properly, you can hurt them,” Chesnut said. “Some church hurt is because people don’t know how to listen and walk alongside people well.”
Chesnut now serves as the associate young adult minister at Brook Hills and maintains a robust writing ministry. She writes the bulk of the church’s small group curriculum and has helped women in the church write curriculum as well. She’s also the author of and has trained other church leaders on the topics of sexuality and women.
“I wanted women to know they aren’t the only one that struggles with sexual sin,” Chesnut said.
It’s a journey that started during Chesnut’s time at Beeson, where she studied under Langston Haygood, a certified sex addiction therapist.
“That was the beginning of a ripple effect. Beeson started that journey for me,” Chesnut said. “I took Allen Ross for Hebrew IV, and we exegeted Psalms. Psalm 22 was the psalm I had to study and preach on, and it has been one of the predominant texts, not just for my life but for how I minister.”
Renowned Christian psychologist Diane Langberg has called trauma the “greatest mission field of the 21st century,” as people struggle with abuse, natural disasters, divorce and flee from war-torn countries. The church needs to be equipped to address mental health and trauma, Chesnut said.
“If 20% of your church had cancer, you would learn some things about cancer,” Chesnut said. “So, if 20% of our church has trauma, we need to learn some things about trauma.”
Toward that end, Chesnut is pursuing a Doctor of Ministry in Spiritual Formation at Denver Seminary, which she said reminds her of Beeson in its interdenominational commitment. Her focus is on neurotheology and taking what we know about the brain and the body and applying it to help people grow spiritually. Her research focuses on the head-heart disconnect, by aligning discipleship not only with the left-brain areas of reading and writing, but also with right-brain functions of emotions, music, creativity and body language.
Chesnut said ministers should strive to “help people connect what they know about God to how they experience Him on a daily basis.”