Recent Wesleyan alum overcomes challenges to enter ministry
Receiving a call to ministry is not unusual, but one recent Virginia Wesleyan alum is overcoming serious challenges to answer that call.
Rushing, who cannot read or write due to
his disability, must have extensive help
to study. Here sophomore Toni Merlo
works with him in the Learning
Resource Center.
Justin "Clay" Rushing '04 has spent his entire life disproving various predictions that "he can't." The 23-year-old was nine months old when he was diagnosed with cerebral spastic quadriplegic palsy. This condition left him unable to control or use his limbs, causing him to be confined to a wheelchair. Rushing also suffers from a severe case of dyslexia, so he cannot read or write.
When Rushing was in high school in Richmond, many people said he would not graduate. After he proved them wrong, he told people he was going to college, and others said he'd never make it through.
Rushing proved those people wrong again when he graduated in December with a degree in religious studies. He began graduate school at Regent University in January, studying for the ordained ministry.
"It's been really tough because of all the help I need," says Rushing. He taped all of his lectures, which he replayed to study. He took all of his tests orally and directed assistants in doing research for papers, which he dictated to them to record.
"I owe everything to the people in the Learning Center," he says. The Learning Center is a free tutoring service available to all VWC students. "All of the faculty members and the work-study students (at the center) through the years have helped me get where I am today."
Rushing felt the call to the ministry during a family vacation in New Orleans just before his sophomore year in college.
"I met a man on the street making balloon animals for children," Rushing says. "He asked me how I deal with my life the way I do. I explained to him how important Jesus was to me, and the man started to cry."
That was the moment Rushing heard God's call. When he returned to Wesleyan, he changed his major to religious studies. "I want to teach people the word of God," he says. "I want to become a pastor of a church or a chaplain."