While other kids raced to the park after church, young Joseph Manaway lingered in the sanctuary.
“I’d be in my dad’s office with the preachers — soaking up their stories like a sponge, studying their cadences, stealing their gestures and mannerisms,” he recalled. “I’d replay their sermons in my head all week, then hold my own revivals at home using butter knife handles and a flashlight as my microphone.”
It was never just child’s play. It was the early evidence of a calling Joseph Manaway already felt.
Now a recent graduate of Seattle Pacific Seminary, Manaway ’25 serves as senior pastoral assistant at Tabernacle Missionary Baptist Church in Seattle along with his father, who has pastored there for over four decades. But his path into ministry wasn’t a matter of obligation. It was the unfolding of something sacred that began long before seminary.
“Ministry has always been at the heart of my life,” he said. “My parents have dedicated a combined 98 years to ministry. I’ve now been in ministry myself for 19 years.”
That ministry has taken him far — preaching across the United States and the Virgin Islands, serving as guest chaplain for the Los Angeles Lakers, and participating in national church leadership. Still, something tugged at him.
“If I was going to be more of what God was calling me to do, more of what God was calling me to be,” Manaway said, “then I had to submit to this next level of education.”
That next level was Seattle Pacific Seminary’s Master of Arts in Theology (Christian Ministries) program — a journey that, for Manaway, became far more than academic. He remembers vividly his first class, THEO 6001 with Dean Brian Lugioyo, where students delved into the book of Job and the theology of lament.
“In my church background, lament wasn’t something we often practiced — certainly not in corporate worship,” Manaway said. “But this idea of bringing your whole self — raw, grieving, questioning — before God without fear of offending him? That was revolutionary. God isn’t intimidated by our humanity; he meets us in it.”
That one class, he said, transformed the way he pastors. “We don’t have to rush past pain to get to praise. Some struggles won’t resolve neatly in this life, and that’s okay.”
But it wasn’t just theology that shaped him. It was community. Particularly, his Wesleyan small group, a practice of Christian formation started in the 18th century by John and Charles Wesley that centers around one question, “How goes it with your soul?”
At first, he doubted the purpose of the weekly group. “It felt like busywork,” he admitted. But when his mother was diagnosed with stage IV cancer just a month into the program, and he was named the next senior pastor of his church shortly after, the group became a lifeline.
“The first people I told weren’t family or close friends, they were my small group,” Manaway said. “It was the space where I didn’t have to be Pastor Manaway or the revival preacher. I could just be Joseph.”
The one question asked each week in the small group became a daily reflection for him, both in journaling and ministry.
Through it all, his sense of purpose deepened.
“Purpose, to me, is the alignment of divine calling with daily action — the assurance that my work isn’t just what I do but why I exist,” he said.
Whether he’s preaching on a Sunday, visiting someone in the hospital, or coordinating outreach for those experiencing homelessness, he carries that conviction with him.
Manaway has extended his ministry in the community in a new role as director of fund development at the Urban League of Metropolitan Seattle, an affiliate of the Nation Urban League which empowers Black and other historically underserved people through social and economic justice. And he continues to preach nationally as an itinerant minister. What excites him most, he said, is “the intersection of it all. The chaos isn’t just busyness; it’s purpose in motion.”
But the journey has had uncertainty.
“There were so many times I honestly felt I wouldn’t finish,” he said of his graduate studies. “I had a good job, was already working in ministry, and traveled regularly. I’d ask myself, ‘Do I really need this?’ But I fought through the fatigue and frustration and got it done. If to no one else, that means something to me. I made it by the grace of God.”
Looking ahead, Manaway’s vision is simple but profound: “I hope to keep living out my purpose the same way I started, on my knees and on my feet. On my knees in prayer, and on my feet in action.”
And while his days of flashlight microphones are long gone, his passion for the pulpit remains just as childlike: pure, persistent, and full of purpose. Manaway’s advice to others pursuing ministry?
“Don’t be so focused on going through seminary that you fail to allow seminary to go through you,” he said. “Resist the urge to simply go through the motions. You’ll be the better for it.”
If you feel the pull by God for going deeper in your calling like Joseph Manaway, consider earning an MA or MDiv degree at Seattle Pacific Seminary. Apply by July 31.
