Pakistani Christian Rachel Younis S’25 brings a global perspective to Bethel Seminary

“I always say that my mother's lap was my first Bible college.”

Rachel Younis S’25 says this while reflecting on her theological development over the years as a fourth-generation Pakistani Christian and now Bethel Seminary graduate. “My interest in theology came from her. She would think about God, talk about God, learn deeply about God, because there’s no end to learning about God, you know. There’s no end,” Rachel says with a smile.

Today, Rachel is a missionary, theologian, writer, student, and teacher with one clear throughline: a deep reverence for God and a desire to share the joy of the global Church with everyone. 

The first classroom

Growing up in Pakistan, Rachel experienced Christians from many different faith traditions. “My mother was from the Restoration Movement, which was about authoritative Scripture while my father was Catholic and later baptized as an adult,” she says.

Rachel’s Christian upbringing extended well beyond her immediate family.

“Pakistani culture is highly communal. We live together, and we are accountable to one another,” she says. In fact, after counting one more time to confirm, Rachel shares that she grew up with 31 people in the same house. 

She also grew up in a Pentecostal home church that gathered to worship at different homes in her community. Rachel’s parents also sent her to missionary school, and that was Presbyterian. 

“I grew up with the body of Christ,” she says. “We have divided ourselves into denominations or non-denominations, but together these are the body of Christ. That has helped me so much.” She describes growing up among different denominations as a kind of flowing from one to the next, bringing richness and depth to her faith as she was surrounded by Christians who all loved the Lord.

According to the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics, Christians in Pakistan make up less than two percent of the population, and Rachel experienced first-hand the systematic and religious persecution they face, including being treated as second- or third-class citizens.

“Violence against Christians can look like church bombings. It could be mob attacks. Somebody was shot. A Christian colony was burned down,” she says. 

To uplift the lives of Christian minorities, Rachel’s uncle, Sam Gill, started a missions organization in Pakistan called New Hope for the World. “Still today, in the modern world, we have slavery. In Pakistan, we work with people who are in bonded slavery, where families are bound under a debt of $500 to $1,500 for generations. They cannot repay because they don't have enough money,” Rachel says.  

This ministry is now central to Rachel’s life in the U.S. where she serves as its liaison representative—a missionary raising awareness of modern slavery in her home country. But when she began college, she had a different future in mind.

The Bethel classroom

Rachel grew up in a lower-middle-class family, and her parents both worked hard to pay for her education at a missionary school. After graduating from high school, Rachel earned an economic degree from a college in Lahore, Pakistan.

In her own words, she wanted to be a banker and make lots of money.  

“During my final year at college though there was this pull to come to the U.S., and my only way to come here was through Bible college,” she says. Her visa was approved, and with the intent to build relationships with churches in the U.S. and share the mission of New Hope for the World, Rachel headed first to Idaho for an undergraduate degree in Christian leadership. Four years later, Rachel moved to Illinois to begin her M.Div. at Lincoln Christian University. 

Unfortunately, in her final year, the university announced it was closing permanently.   

“My professor gave me three transfer options to finish my M.Div. degree. After praying a lot, I selected Bethel Seminary. I don't know why, but it was God's Spirit that just spoke to me to select it,” Rachel says.

Rachel felt God confirmed her decision when she realized that Bethel professor Jeannine Brown was the scholar her Illinois professors had praised. “A professor told me I would be in good hands, and they were right,” she says. Rachel connected with the dean of the School of Theology and Bethel Seminary, Peter Vogt. “He was phenomenal. He took everything in with the transition, and made it as smooth as possible. Between Dr. Vogt and Dr. Brown, I was so blessed and supported emotionally and spiritually,” she says. “It was all God’s doing.”

Rachel had never been to Minnesota. “I had no idea about the geography, where it was, or the weather,” she says.

Frozen Lake Valentine wasn’t the only surprise on Bethel’s campus. “There was a welcome party where you could meet professors and other classmates. Then there are fall and Christmas parties. I love those kinds of community parties,” she says. Because her former school dwindled in size before closing, a sense of community suffered. “I didn’t realize I was seeking community, but I had somehow missed it before Bethel,” she says. 

Her seminary community quickly turned into deep spiritual friendships. Rachel joined a prayer group with two other seminary students. “I love praying with friends and was looking forward to making friends so I signed up for a triad prayer group. I wanted to give it a try—maybe something would come of it,” she says.

Her group began to meet regularly on campus, and then they started meeting early in the morning to pray for an hour or two at Rachel’s apartment in North Village. Eventually, she introduced her friends to Pakistani tea during their prayer time.

“It was very powerful. So many students like me have been impacted by Bethel’s triad prayer groups. I hope Bethel keeps doing them forever,” Rachel says. 

Rachel also felt remarkably supported outside of her spiritual development. When she arrived at Bethel, she was assigned a student advising coach. “English is my third language, so it is sometimes really hard to understand how an organization functions, all the emails coming in, and everything required with my visa as an international student,” she says. Rachel found genuine support in her student advising coach, Marsha Bradt. “We would meet regularly, sometimes in person, sometimes over Zoom. She’d even take me grocery shopping, and we would pray together. We still meet and pray together,” she says.  

The classroom expands

For Rachel, pursuing her M.Div. was as much an exercise in humility as it was an academic pursuit. “The deeper you go into the Word of God, you lose so much of yourself. You start denying yourself, and you focus on God instead,” she says. “I wanted to be renewed and transformed by God’s Spirit.”

Bethel’s program also developed Rachel’s ability to support and communicate with a congregation, no matter the setting. This was particularly important as Rachel became a resident missionary at Little Galilee Christian Camp and Retreat Center in Illinois for her chaplaincy internship.  

“I led a women's Bible study for eight months, and all the tools that I learned in my biblical studies—like with Greek and Hebrew word studies and translations—were very helpful,” she says. Women from ages 18 to 95 with different faith backgrounds attended the study. Rachel not only used her upbringing to guide the study, but she also felt equipped to adapt her learning for this specific congregation that she had been called to lead.

“I don’t think I would have led a study like this before my preparation at Bethel, but my M.Div. degree has given me so much confidence in the Lord,” Rachel says.

She also sees evidence of her preparation for leadership in other areas of her ministry. She now writes sermons, preaches as a guest missionary at local churches, maintains a blog, prepares to speak at conferences, and even writes stories and teaches young campers.

She isn’t done with learning either. Rachel is pursuing another degree from Bethel Seminary—her master’s in theological studies.

A classroom without borders

While Rachel came to Bethel to deepen her theological understanding, she also brought a wealth of experiences and perspectives for others to learn from. Brown recalls meeting Rachel for the first time when she transferred to Bethel.

“When we sat down for coffee at the Royal Grounds, I was immediately struck by her joy in God and her earnestness to be a minister of the gospel,” Brown says. “She and her fellow believers in Pakistan have experienced what it means to live out their faith in difficult circumstances, and she has much to teach those of us in the West about living missionally and with endurance.” Brown recognized her passion and gifts would make her an excellent teacher and theologian.  

Rachel hopes to be a professor one day, and a unique opportunity surfaced for her to share her perspective and gain experience toward achieving that dream: Bethel’s Seminary for Everyone. 

Seminary for Everyone encourages Christians of all walks of life to engage in a topic that seminary students have the privilege of encountering in an intentionally designed course—but without the homework, as Brown likes to say. 

Rachel will teach a course in January 2027 called God's Word without Borders: Reading Scripture with the Global Church. She hopes to help students approach the Bible as a treasure to be read with humility, recognizing that access to Scripture is not universal. “So many of our brothers and sisters around the world—millions of Christians—still do not have the Bible. It might not be in their language, they can’t afford one, or they can’t have a Bible because it is still banned in their country,” Rachel says.

By approaching both the Bible and one another with humility, she believes Christians can learn from perspectives across the global Church rather than remaining rooted in their own interpretations. 

“As a woman from Pakistan,” Brown says, “Rachel can represent her own setting, and her seminary studies have introduced her to theologians across the globe who have much to offer our understanding of the Bible. She has curated a wonderful course for anyone interested in expanding their horizons about the Bible.”

Rachel wants people reading the Bible in English to recognize that others are reading it in Urdu, Hindi, Farsi, Chinese, and in many African languages.

“So are we really reading it alone?” she says. “Our faith isn’t just American Christianity or Pakistani Christianity. It’s one body of Christ spread across all four corners of the world, and we need to learn from each other. That’s the goal of the global Church.”

Explore Seminary for Everyone

Whether you're interested in a particular topic or want a taste of what Bethel Seminary offers, Seminary for Everyone makes theological learning accessible through flexible courses taught by instructors, including Rachel Younis. Discover a new perspective on Scripture by registering for Rachel's upcoming course, God's Word without Borders: Reading Scripture with the Global Church.

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