(This article originally appeared in the Spring 2025 ECHO Magazine.)
Since Manoj Jacob (’24) has traveled extensively, he has absorbed different dialects, languages and cultures into his view of caring for those across the world. Jacob, as he prefers to be called, started his bi-vocational career as a missionary and regional head of corporate organizations, and later transitioned into being a counselor, pastor, outreach minister, and chaplain in the United States.
LBC master’s degree graduate Manoj Jacob / Photo by Sara Vars
“Our Lord brought me to LBC,” he shares. Jacob’s LBC experience began after he attended in-person graduate courses at a Maryland-based Bible college that closed after his first semester. Through that transition process, he learned about Lancaster Bible College and one other institution. With LBC being the closest to him, he accepted the “divine plan and orchestration” of his enrollment in the Christian Care (online dual degree program) where he would graduate with both an MA and an MDiv. While Jacob, who was raised in a Christian home and made his faith his own as a teen, brought his own practical experiences of caring for others, his goal at LBC was to become strong in the theory of caregiving.
Decades before as an undergraduate student, he started his ministry on campus and eventually started and led the Intervarsity Christian Fellowship affiliate movement on various campuses across Asia. During this time, he also provided Christian-based care to hospital patients and their families. His care for others, which he humbly references, also includes being a leader in an international church planting movement, helping to establish aftercare homes for human trafficking victims and children born on red-light streets, and assisting with coordinating U.S.-based mission organizations and churches. All this was before LBC and his future ministries.
“LBC prepared me for the future by intentionally developing my head, my heart and my hands for ministry,” he shares. “LBC reinforced my ministry of caring for others.” Through his Christian Care courses, Jacob was strengthened in his counseling, teaching and preaching ministry, especially with resources that provided “the impetus to move forward with great zeal.” His MDiv courses helped him “recapitulate the depths of the original writings of the Scriptures.”
Outside the classroom, Jacob implemented this strengthened theory of caregiving in his role as a board-certified chaplain with a hospital group, where he focuses on providing support not just for patients but also for staff at all levels. The need for this support and care became apparent to him during the COVID-19 pandemic when things were “shaken from the top to the bottom.” This was further amplified through conversations Jacob had with doctors and hospital staff members, who were seeing elevated daily tragedy while having to tell families of dire situations and even death. The result was the start and continual holding of support groups for hospital doctors and staff, who often, in the face of their care to patients and families, “feel it, but can’t express their humanness in an open way.” Through these support groups, doctors and staff can openly discuss processing their innermost thoughts and feelings, which often can’t be expressed to colleagues.
“When I review my life at LBC, all I can say is that ‘with God, all things are possible,’” Jacob shares. LBC not only taught him but also helped him stay focused through the ups and downs of life. “There were times when I thought about whether I could complete my course,” he adds. “I am thankful to the Lord and LBC that I continued my courses without any semester gaps.”
He thanks his professors and classmates as part of his educational journey and especially thanks his wife, Remi, and son for their “sacrificial support during these years of study.” It is through this support and sacrifice that Jacob’s further implementation of the theory of caregiving is supporting those who receive and even give care.