Mike Carey didn’t grow up Wesleyan. In fact, he didn’t grow up in a Christian home.
Even so, he always sensed a kind of calling on his life. He is a triplet, and when he was born, complications nearly caused his death. Knowing how close she came to losing him, Mike’s mother always encouraged him to make the most of the life he’d been given. “A miracle, I think, is how she described it,” Mike said. “Again, that coming from a non-believing woman.”
He grew up in a rural area of New York, near Albany. “I would go to church, like, once a year maybe, with my grandmother,” Mike said. Other than that, church wasn’t a priority for his family. But he was always a curious kid. He often watched videos of street preachers, which eventually led him to start attending a non-denominational church near his home, where a friend’s father was the pastor.
Mike joined the men’s Bible study there, and while he was still a teenager, another member of the group suggested the church give some of the congregation’s young people opportunities to preach.
“I was terrified,” Mike said, “but I did it, and I was like, ‘Huh. That was not bad.’” Living in a rural area with a lot of small churches, Mike quickly found himself with more and more opportunities to preach.
As he neared the end of high school, Mike started considering what was next. “Most ministers in my area don’t go to college, so college was a really weird thing for me to do,” he said. But he sensed value in the idea of more preparation. “If I’m going to do this for the next 60, 70 years of my life, I better be the best-trained pastor that I can be.”
He thought about several options for college, but few schools met his combined criteria for biblical education and financial affordability. When he got a letter from Houghton University, Houghton, New York, he didn’t know anything about The Wesleyan Church. But Houghton’s offer was more financially viable than another school he’d visited first. “I was like, you know what, let me just take a chance on it. If I don’t like the school, I can go somewhere else or whatever,” Mike said. “But I really found my home here.”
Now, he is in his third year as a ministry student at Houghton and has already preached more than 100 sermons in New York churches. His mom, who remains his greatest supporter, has been in attendance at every one.
Mike is also Houghton’s student body chaplain this year, elected by his peers. While he manages his responsibilities at school, he continues to preach in nearby rural churches.
Dr. J. L. Miller, Houghton’s chair of Religion and an associate professor of Christian Ministry, has known Mike since the beginning of his college journey. He has watched Mike’s appreciation for the Wesleyan denomination grow. “It’s really exciting to see someone resonate well with the theology,” he said.
Mike said that when he first started learning about TWC, “denominations were new, but I really felt kinda like, welcomed, very embraced.”
One of his first introductions to TWC beyond the local church level was a visit to the headquarters in Fishers, Indiana, for an event called College Day. TWC’s Education and Clergy Development hosted ministry students from all of the Wesleyan universities at this event last year. Mike was impressed by ECD’s intentionality in organizing and funding the trip, and he remembers getting to sit at a table with General Superintendent Wayne Schmidt.
“It was my first taste of kind of like, ‘Wow, this is a really diverse, large group of people from all these different places, but yet there’s a common confession there, there’s a common goal,” said Mike.
In February 2025, Mike officially joined TWC as a member of a local church. “I can’t say enough good things about what my experience has been,” he said. The community, resources and support provided by the denomination, even to young ministerial students, impacted him deeply.
Dr. Miller loves seeing the powerful impact that our Wesleyan universities can have. “The church and the academy are two different places with the same desire to see God’s kingdom come, but doing different jobs, right?” he said. “There are things that the academy can do that the church can’t, things the church can do that the academy can’t, but we can support each other in really incredible ways.”
He points to the way TWC has supported and blessed ministry students like Mike. “The way the denomination has been committed to do that makes stories like this possible,” said Dr. Miller.
To learn more about The Wesleyan Church’s educational institutions and their impact, go to Wesleyan.org/ecd/highereducation.
Jerah Winn is a writer for The Wesleyan Church. She is passionate about sharing stories with others for the glory of God, and she currently resides in central Indiana.
